Chapter 14, 15.

ʺThe transactions of this our city of Saïs, are recorded in our sacred writings during a period of 8,000 years.ʺ
PLATO, Timæus

ʺThe Egyptians assert that from the reign of Heracles to that of Amasis, 17,000 years elapsed.ʺ

HERODOTUS, lib. ii., c. 43

ʺCan the theologian derive no light from the pure, primeval faith that glimmers from Egyptian hieroglyphics, to illustrate the immortality of the soul? Will not the historian deign to notice the prior origin of every art and science in Egypt, a thousand years before the Pelasgians studded the isles and capes of the Archipelago with their forts and temples?ʺ

GLIDDON

ORIGIN OF THE EGYPTIANS

HOW came Egypt by her knowledge? When broke the dawn of that civilization whose wondrous perfection is suggested by the bits and fragments supplied to us by the archæologists? Alas! the lips of Memnon are silent, and no longer utter oracles; the Sphinx has become a greater riddle in her speechlessness than was the enigma propounded to Œdipus.

What Egypt taught to others she certainly did not acquire by the international exchange of ideas and discoveries with

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her Semitic neighbors, nor from them did she receive her stimulus. ʺThe more we learn of the Egyptians,ʺ observes the writer of a recent article, ʺthe more marvellous they seem!ʺ From whom could she have learned her wondrous arts, the secrets of which died with her? She sent no agents throughout the world to learn what others knew; but to her the wise men of neighboring nations resorted for knowledge. Proudly secluding herself within her enchanted domain, the fair queen of the desert created wonders as if by the sway of a magic staff. ʺNothing,ʺ remarks the same writer, whom we have elsewhere quoted, ʺproves that civilization and knowledge then rise and progress with her as in the case of other peoples, but everything seems to be referable, in the same perfection, to the earliest dates. That no nation knew as much as herself, is a fact demonstrated by history.ʺ

May we not assign as a reason for this remark the fact that until very recently nothing was known of Old India? That these two nations, India and Egypt, were akin? That they were the oldest in the group of nations; and that the Eastern Ethiopians — the mighty builders — had come from India as a matured people, bringing their civilization with them, and colonizing the perhaps unoccupied Egyptian territory? But we defer a more complete elaboration of this theme for our second volume.*

ʺMechanism,ʺ says Eusebe Salverte, ʺwas carried by the ancients to a point of perfection that has never been attained

* See vol. ii., chap. 8.

in modern times. We would inquire if their inventions have been surpassed in our age? Certainly not; and at the present day, with all the means that the progress of science and modern discovery have placed in the hands of the mechanic, have we not been assailed by numerous difficulties in striving to place on a pedestal one of those monoliths that the Egyptians forty centuries ago erected in such numbers before their sacred edifices.ʺ

As far back as we can glance into history, to the reign of Menes, the most ancient of the kings that we know anything about, we find proofs that the Egyptians were far better acquainted with hydrostatics and hydraulic engineering than ourselves. The gigantic work of turning the course of the Nile

— or rather of its three principal branches — and bringing it to Memphis, was accomplished during the reign of that monarch, who appears to us as distant in the abyss of time as a far‐glimmering star in the heavenly vault. Says Wilkinson: ʺMenes took accurately the measure of the power which he had to oppose, and he constructed a dyke whose lofty mounds and enormous embankments turned the water eastward, and since that time the river is contained in its new bed.ʺ Herodotus has left us a poetical, but still accurate description of the lake Mœris, so called after the Pharaoh who caused this artificial sheet of water to be formed.

The historian has described this lake as measuring 450 miles in circumference, and 300 feet in depth. It was fed through artificial channels by the Nile, and made to store a portion of the annual overflow for the irrigation of the

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country, for many miles round. Its numerous floodgates, dams, locks, and convenient engines were constructed with the greatest skill. The Romans, at a far later period, got their notions on hydraulic constructions from the Egyptians, but our latest progress in the science of hydrostatics has demonstrated the fact of a great deficiency on their part in some branches of that knowledge. Thus, for instance, if they were acquainted with that which is called in hydrostatics the great law, they seem to have been less familiar with what our modern engineers know as water‐tight joints. Their ignorance is sufficiently proved by their conveying the water through large level aqueducts, instead of doing it at a less expense by iron pipes beneath the surface. But the Egyptians evidently employed a far superior method in their channels and artificial water‐works. Notwithstanding this, the modern engineers employed by Lesseps for the Suez Canal, who had learned from the ancient Romans all their art could teach them, deriving, in their turn, their knowledge from Egypt — scoffed at the suggestion that they should seek a remedy for some imperfections in their work by studying the contents of the various Egyptian museums. Nevertheless, the engineers succeeded in giving to the banks of that ʺlong and ugly ditch,ʺ as Professor Carpenter calls the Suez Canal, sufficient strength to make it a navigable water‐way, instead of a mud‐ trap for vessels as it was at first.

THEIR MIGHTY ENGINEERING WORKS

The alluvial deposits of the Nile, during the past thirty centuries, have completely altered the area of the Delta, so that it is continually growing seaward, and adding to the territory of the Khedive. In ancient times, the principal mouth of the river was called Pelusian; and the canal cut by one of the kings — the canal of Necho — led from Suez to this branch. After the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra, at Actium, it was proposed that a portion of the fleet should pass through the canal to the Red Sea, which shows the depth of water that those early engineers had secured. Settlers in Colorado and Arizona have recently reclaimed large tracts of barren land by a system of irrigation; receiving from the journals of the day no little praise for their ingenuity. But, for a distance of 500 miles above Cairo, there stretches a strip of land reclaimed from the desert, and made, according to Professor Carpenter, ʺthe most fertile on the face of the earth.ʺ He says, ʺfor thousands of years these branch canals have conveyed fresh water from the Nile, to fertilize the land of this long narrow strip, as well as of the Delta.ʺ He describes ʺthe net‐work of canals over the Delta, which dates from an early period of the Egyptian monarchs.ʺ

The French province of Artois has given its name to the Artesian well, as though that form of engineering had been first applied in that district; but, if we consult the Chinese records, we find such wells to have been in common use ages before the Christian era.

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If we now turn to architecture, we find displayed before our eyes, wonders which baffle all description. Referring to the temples of Philæ, Abu Simbel, Dendera, Edfu, and Karnak, Professor Carpenter remarks that ʺthese stupendous and beautiful erections . . . these gigantic pyramids and templesʺ have a ʺvastness and beautyʺ which are ʺstill impressive after the lapse of thousands of years.ʺ He is amazed at ʺthe admirable character of the workmanship; the stones in most cases being fitted together with astonishing nicety, so that a knife could hardly be thrust between the joints.ʺ He noticed in his amateur archæological pilgrimage, another of those ʺcurious coincidencesʺ which his Holiness, the Pope, may feel some interest in learning. He is speaking of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, sculptured on the old monuments, and the ancient belief in the immortality of the soul. ʺNow, it is most remarkable,ʺ says the professor, ʺto see that not only this belief, but the language in which it was expressed in the ancient Egyptian times, anticipated that of the Christian Revelation. For, in this Book of the Dead, there are used the very phrases we find in the New Testament, in connection with the day of judgmentʺ; and he admits that this hierogram was ʺengraved, probably, 2,000 years before the time of Christ.ʺ

According to Bunsen, who is considered to have made the most exact calculations, the mass of masonry in the great Pyramid of Cheops measures 82,111,000 feet, and would weigh 6,316,000 tons. The immense numbers of squared stones show us the unparalleled skill of the Egyptian

quarrymen. Speaking of the great pyramid, Kenrick says: ʺThe joints are scarcely perceptible, not wider than the thickness of silver paper, and the cement is so tenacious, that fragments of the casing‐stones still remain in their original position, notwithstanding the lapse of many centuries, and the violence by which they were detached.ʺ Who, of our modern architects and chemists, will rediscover the indestructible cement of the oldest Egyptian buildings?

ʺThe skill of the ancients in quarrying,ʺ says Bunsen, ʺis displayed the most in the extracting of the huge blocks, out of which obelisks and colossal statues were hewn — obelisks ninety feet high, and statues forty feet high, made out of one stone!ʺ There are many such. They did not blast out the blocks for these monuments, but adopted the following scientific method: Instead of using huge iron wedges, which would have split the stone, they cut a small groove for the whole length of, perhaps, 100 feet, and inserted in it, close to each other, a great number of dry wooden wedges; after which they poured water into the groove, and the wedges swelling and bursting simultaneously, with a tremendous force, broke out the huge stone, as neatly as a diamond cuts a pane of glass.

Modern geographers and geologists have demonstrated that these monoliths were brought from a prodigious distance, and have been at a loss to conjecture how the transport was effected. Old manuscripts say that it was done by the help of portable rails. These rested upon inflated bags of hide, rendered indestructible by the same process as that

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used for preserving the mummies. These ingenious air‐ cushions prevented the rails from sinking in the deep sand. Manetho mentions them, and remarks that they were so well prepared that they would endure wear and tear for centuries.

The date of the hundreds of pyramids in the Valley of the Nile is impossible to fix by any of the rules of modern science; but Herodotus informs us that each successive king erected one to commemorate his reign, and serve as his sepulchre. But, Herodotus did not tell all, although he knew that the real purpose of the pyramid was very different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his religious scruples, he might have added that, externally, it symbolized the creative principle of nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation‐scenes of members of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn‐ bin, was the baptismal font, upon emerging from which, the neophyte was ʺborn again,ʺ and became an adept.

Herodotus gives us, however, a just idea of the enormous labor expended in transporting one of these gigantic blocks of granite. It measured thirty‐two feet in length, twenty‐one feet in width, and twelve feet in height. Its weight he estimates to be rising 300 tons, and it occupied 2,000 men for three years to move it from Syene to the Delta, down the Nile. Gliddon, in his Ancient Egypt, quotes from Pliny a description of the

arrangements for moving the obelisk erected at Alexandria by Ptolemæus Philadelphus. A canal was dug from the Nile to the place where the obelisk lay. Two boats were floated under it; they were weighted with stones containing one cubic foot each, and the weight of the obelisk having been calculated by the engineers, the cargo of the boats was exactly proportioned to it, so that they should be sufficiently submerged to pass under the monolith as it lay across the canal. Then, the stones were gradually removed, the boats rose, lifted the obelisk, and it was floated down the river.

In the Egyptian section of the Dresden, or Berlin Museum, we forget which, is a drawing which represents a workman ascending an unfinished pyramid, with a basket of sand upon his back. This has suggested to certain Egyptologists the idea that the blocks of the pyramids were chemically manufactured in loco. Some modern engineers believe that Portland cement, a double silicate of lime and alumina, is the imperishable cement of the ancients. But, on the other hand, Professor Carpenter asserts that the pyramids, with the exception of their granite casing, is formed of what ʺgeologists call nummulitic limestone. This is newer than the old chalk, and is made of the shells of animals called nummulites — like little pieces of money about the size of a shilling.ʺ However this moot question may be decided, no one, from Herodotus and Pliny down to the last wandering engineer who has gazed upon these imperial monuments of long‐crumbled dynasties, has been able to tell us how the gigantic masses were transported and set up in place. Bunsen

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concedes to Egypt an antiquity of 20,000 years. But even in this matter we would be left to conjecture if we depended upon modern authorities. They can neither tell us for what the pyramids were constructed, under what dynasty the first was raised, nor the material of which they are built. All is conjecture with them.

Professor Smyth has given us by far the most accurate mathematical description of the great pyramid to be found in literature. But after showing the astronomical bearings of the structure, he so little appreciates ancient Egyptian thought that he actually maintains that the porphyry sarcophagus of the kingʹs chamber is the unit of measure for the two most enlightened nations of the earth — ʺEngland and America.ʺ One of the books of Hermes describes certain of the pyramids as standing upon the sea‐shore, ʺthe waves of which dashed in powerless fury against its base.ʺ This implies that the geographical features of the country have been changed, and may indicate that we must accord to these ancient ʺgranaries,ʺ ʺmagico‐astrological observatories,ʺ and ʺroyal sepulchres,ʺ an origin antedating the upheaval of the Sahara and other deserts. This would imply rather more of an antiquity than the poor few thousands of years, so generously accorded to them by Egyptologists.

Dr. Rebold, a French archæologist of some renown, gives his readers a glimpse of the culture which prevailed 5,000 (?) years B.C., by saying that there were at that time no less than ʺthirty or forty colleges of the priests who studied occult sciences and practical magic.ʺ

A writer in the National Quarterly Review (Vol. xxxii., No. lxiii., December, 1875) says that, ʺThe recent excavations made among the ruins of Carthage have brought to light traces of a civilization, a refinement of art and luxury, which must even have outshone that of ancient Rome; and when the fiat went forth, Delenda est Carthago, the mistress of the world well knew that she was about to destroy a greater than herself, for, while one empire swayed the world by force of arms alone, the other was the last and most perfect representative of a race who had, for centuries before Rome was dreamed of, directed the civilization, the learning, and the intelligence of mankind.ʺ This Carthage is the one which, according to Appian, was standing as early as B.C. 1234, or fifty years before the taking of Troy, and not the one popularly supposed to have been built by Dido (Elissa or Astarte) four centuries later.

Here we have still another illustration of the truth of the doctrine of cycles. Draperʹs admissions as to the astronomical erudition of the ancient Egyptians are singularly supported by an interesting fact quoted by Mr. J. M. Peebles, from a lecture delivered in Philadelphia, by the late Professor O. M. Mitchell, the astronomer. Upon the coffin of a mummy, now in the British Museum, was delineated the zodiac with the exact positions of the planets at the time of the autumnal equinox, in the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell calculated the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system at the time indicated. ʺThe result,ʺ says Mr. Peebles, ʺI give in his own words: ʹTo my astonishment . . . it

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was found that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C., the moon and planets had occupied the exact points in the heavens marked upon the coffin in the British Museum.ʹ ʺ*

THE ANCIENT LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

Professor John Fiske, in his onslaught on Dr. Draperʹs

History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, sets his pen against the doctrine of cyclical progression, remarking that ʺwe have never known the beginning or the end of an historic cycle, and have no inductive warrant for believing that we are now traversing one.ʺ† He chides the author of that eloquent and thoughtful work for the ʺodd disposition exhibited throughout his work, not only to refer the best part of Greek culture to an Egyptian source, but uniformly to exalt the non‐ European civilization at the expense of the European.ʺ We believe that this ʺodd dispositionʺ might be directly sanctioned by the confessions of great Grecian historians themselves. Professor Fiske might, with profit, read Herodotus over again. The ʺFather of Historyʺ confesses more than once that Greece owes everything to Egypt. As to his assertion that the world has never known the beginning or the end of an historical cycle, we have but to cast a retrospective glance on the many glorious nations which have

* J. M. Peebles, ʺAround the World.ʺ

† John Fiske, ʺThe North American Review,ʺ art. The Laws of History, July, 1869.

passed away, i.e., reached the end of their great national cycle.

Compare the Egypt of that day, with its perfection of art, science, and religion, its glorious cities and monuments, and its swarming population, with the Egypt of to‐day, peopled with strangers; its ruins the abode of bats and snakes, and a few Copts the sole surviving heirs to all this grandeur — and see whether the cyclical theory does not reassert itself. Says Gliddon, who is now contradicted by Mr. Fiske: ʺPhilologists, astronomers, chemists, painters, architects, physicians, must return to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing; of the calendar and solar motion; of the art of cutting granite with a copper chisel, and of giving elasticity to a copper sword; of making glass with the variegated hues of the rainbow; of moving single blocks of polished syenite, nine hundred tons in weight, for any distance, by land and water; of building arches, rounded and pointed, with masonic precision unsurpassed at the present day, and antecedent by 2,000 years to the ʹCloaca Magnaʹ of Rome; of sculpturing a Doric column 1,000 years before the Dorians are known in history; of fresco painting in imperishable colors; of practical knowledge in anatomy; and of time‐defying pyramid‐ building.ʺ

ʺEvery craftsman can behold, in Egyptian monuments, the progress of his art 4,000 years ago; and whether it be a wheelwright building a chariot, a shoemaker drawing his twine, a leather‐cutter using the self‐same form of knife of old as is considered the best form now, a weaver throwing the

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same hand‐shuttle, a whitesmith using that identical form of blow‐pipe but lately recognized to be the most efficient, the seal‐engraver cutting, in hieroglyphics, such names as Schoohoʹs, above 4,300 years ago — all these, and many more astounding evidences of Egyptian priority, now require but a glance at the plates of Rossellini.ʺ

ʺTruly,ʺ exclaims Mr. Peebles, ʺthese Ramsean temples and tombs were as much a marvel to the Grecian Herodotus as they are to us!ʺ*

But, even then, the merciless hand of time had left its traces upon their structures, and some of them, whose very memory would be lost were it not for the Books of Hermes, had been swept away into the oblivion of the ages. King after king, and dynasty after dynasty had passed in a glittering pageant before the eyes of succeeding generations and their renown had filled the habitable globe. The same pall of forgetfulness had fallen upon them and their monuments alike, before the first of our historical authorities, Herodotus, preserved for posterity the remembrance of that wonder of the world, the great Labyrinth. The long‐accepted Biblical chronology has so cramped the minds of not only the clergy, but even our scarce‐unfettered scientists, that in treating of prehistoric remains in different parts of the world, a constant fear is manifested on their part to trespass beyond the period of 6,000 years, hitherto allowed by theology as the age of the world.

* M. Peebles, ʺAround the World.ʺ

Herodotus found the Labyrinth already in ruins; but nevertheless his admiration for the genius of its builders knew no bounds. He regarded it as far more marvellous than the pyramids themselves, and, as an eye‐witness, minutely describes it. The French and Prussian savants, as well as other Egyptologists, agree as to the emplacement, and identified its noble ruins. Moreover, they confirm the account given of it by the old historian. Herodotus says that he found therein 3,000 chambers; half subterranean and the other half above‐ground. ʺThe upper chambers,ʺ he says, ʺI myself passed through and examined in detail. In the underground ones (which may exist till now, for all the archæologists know), the keepers of the building would not let me in, for they contain the sepulchres of the kings who built the Labyrinth, and also those of the sacred crocodiles. The upper chambers I saw and examined with my own eyes, and found them to excel all other human productions.ʺ In Rawlinsonʹs translation, Herodotus is made to say: ʺThe passages through the houses and the varied windings of the paths across the courts, excited in me infinite admiration as I passed from the courts into the chambers, and from thence into colonnades, and from colonnades into other houses, and again into courts unseen before. The roof was throughout of stone like the walls, and both were exquisitely carved all over with figures. Every court was surrounded with a colonnade, which was built of white stones, sculptured most exquisitely. At the corner of the Labyrinth stands a pyramid forty fathoms high, with large figures engraved on it, and it is entered by a vast subterranean passage.ʺ

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If such was the Labyrinth, when viewed by Herodotus, what, in such a case, was ancient Thebes, the city destroyed far earlier than the period of Psammeticus, who himself reigned 530 years after the destruction of Troy? We find that in his time Memphis was the capital, while of the glorious Thebes there remained but ruins. Now, if we, who are enabled to form our estimate only by the ruins of what was already ruins so many ages before our era — are stupefied in their contemplation, what must have been the general aspect of Thebes in the days of its glory? Karnak — temple, palace, ruins, or whatsoever the archæologists may term it — is now its only representative. But solitary and alone as it stands, fit emblem of majestic empire, as if forgotten by time in the onward march of the centuries, it testifies to the art and skill of the ancients. He must be indeed devoid of the spiritual perception of genius, who fails to feel as well as to see the intellectual grandeur of the race that planned and built it.

Champollion, who passed almost his entire life in the exploration of archæological remains, gives vent to his emotions in the following descriptions of Karnak: ʺThe ground covered by the mass of remaining buildings is square; and each side measures 1,800 feet. One is astounded and overcome by the grandeur of the sublime remnants, the prodigality and magnificence of workmanship to be seen everywhere.ʺ ʺNo people of ancient or modern times has conceived the art of architecture upon a scale so sublime, so grandiose as it existed among the ancient Egyptians; and the imagination, which in Europe soars far above our porticos,

arrests itself and falls powerless at the foot of the hundred and forty columns of the hypostyle of Karnak! In one of its halls, the Cathedral of Notre Dame might stand and not touch the ceiling, but be considered as a small ornament in the centre of the hall.ʺ

A writer in a number of an English periodical, of 1870, evidently speaking with the authority of a traveller who describes what he has seen, expresses himself as follows: ʺCourts, halls, gateways, pillars, obelisks, monolithic figures, sculptures, long rows of sphinxes, are found in such profusion at Karnak, that the sight is too much for modern comprehension.ʺ

Says Denon, the French traveller: ʺIt is hardly possible to believe, after seeing it, in the reality of the existence of so many buildings collected together on a single point, in their dimensions, in the resolute perseverance which their construction required, and in the incalculable expenses of so much magnificence! It is necessary that the reader should fancy what is before him to be a dream, as he who views the objects themselves occasionally yields to the doubt whether he be perfectly awake. . . . There are lakes and mountains within the periphery of the sanctuary. These two edifices are selected as examples from a list next to inexhaustible. The whole valley and delta of the Nile, from the cataracts to the sea, was covered with temples, palaces, tombs, pyramids, obelisks, and pillars. The execution of the sculptures is beyond praise. The mechanical perfection with which artists wrought in granite, serpentine, breccia, and basalt, is

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wonderful, according to all the experts . . . animals and plants look as good as natural, and artificial objects are beautifully sculptured; battles by sea and land, and scenes of domestic life are to be found in all their bas‐reliefs.ʺ

ʺThe monuments,ʺ says an English author, ʺwhich there strike the traveller, fill his mind with great ideas. At the sight of the colossuses and superb obelisks, which seem to surpass the limits of human nature, he cannot help exclaiming, ʹThis was the work of man,ʹ and this sentiment seems to ennoble his existence.ʺ* In his turn, Dr. Richardson, speaking of the Temple of Dendera, says: ʺThe female figures are so extremely well executed, that they do all but speak; they have a mildness of feature and expression that never was surpassed.ʺ

Every one of these stones is covered with hieroglyphics, and the more ancient they are, the more beautifully we find them chiselled.

Does not this furnish a new proof that history got its first glimpse of the ancients when the arts were already fast degenerating among them? The obelisks have their inscriptions cut two inches, and sometimes more, in depth, and they are cut with the highest degree of perfection. Some idea may be formed of their depth, from the fact that the Arabs, for a small fee, will climb sometimes to the very top of an obelisk, by inserting their toes and fingers in the excavations of the hieroglyphics. That all of these works, in which solidity rivals the beauty of their execution, were done

* Savary, ʺLetters on Egypt,ʺ vol. ii., p. 67. London, 1786.

before the days of the Exodus, there remains no historical doubt whatever. ( All the archæologists now agree in saying that, the further back we go in history, the better and finer become these arts.) These views clash again with the individual opinion of Mr. Fiske, who would have us believe that ʺthe sculptures upon these monuments (of Egypt, Hindustan, and Assyria), moreover, betoken a very undeveloped condition of the artistic faculties.ʺ† Nay, the learned gentleman goes farther. Joining his voice in the opposition against the claims of learning — which belongs by right to the sacerdotal castes of antiquity — to that of Lewis, he contemptuously remarks that ʺthe extravagant theory of a profound science possessed by the Egyptian priesthood from a remote antiquity, and imparted to itinerant Greek philosophers, has been utterly destroyed (?) by Sir G. C. Lewis‡. . . while, with regard to Egypt and Hindustan, as well as Assyria, it may be said that the colossal monuments which have adorned these countries since prehistoric times, bear witness to the former prevalence of a barbaric despotism, totally incompatible with social nobility, and, therefore, with well‐sustained progress.ʺ§

A curious argument, indeed. If the size and grandeur of public monuments are to serve to our posterity as a standard by which to approximately estimate the ʺprogress of

civilizationʺ attained by their builders, it may be prudent, perhaps, for America, so proud of her alleged progress and freedom, to dwarf her buildings at once to one story. Otherwise, according to Professor Fiskeʹs theory, the archæologists of A.D. 3877 will be applying to the ʺAncient Americaʺ of 1877, the rule of Lewis — and say the ancient United States ʺmay be considered as a great latifundium, or plantation, cultivated by the entire population, as the kingʹs (presidentʹs) slaves.ʺ Is it because the white‐skinned Aryan races were never born ʺbuilders,ʺ like the Eastern Æthiopians, or dark‐skinned Caucasians,* and, therefore, never able to compete with the latter in such colossal structures, that we must jump at the conclusion that these grandiose temples and pyramids could only have been erected under the whip of a merciless despot? Strange logic! It would really seem more prudent to hold to the ʺrigorous canons of criticismʺ laid down by Lewis and Grote, and honestly confess at once, that we really know little about these ancient nations, and that, except so far as purely hypothetical speculations go, unless we study in the same direction as the ancient priests did, we have as little chance in the future. We only know what they allowed the uninitiated to know, but the little we do learn of them by deduction, ought to be sufficient to assure us that, even in the nineteenth century, with all our claims to supremacy in arts and sciences, we are totally unable, we will not say to build anything like the monuments of Egypt,

* We shall attempt to demonstrate in Vol. II., chapter viii., that the ancient Æthiopians were never a Hamitic race.

Hindustan, or Assyria, but even to rediscover the least of the ancient ʺlost arts.ʺ Besides, Sir Gardner Wilkinson gives forcible expression to this view of the exhumed treasures of old, by adding that, ʺhe can trace no primitive mode of life, no barbarous customs, but a sort of stationary civilization from the most remote periods.ʺ Thus far, archæology disagrees with geology, which affirms that the further they trace the remains of men, the more barbarous they find them. It is doubtful if geology has even yet exhausted the field of research afforded her in the caves, and the views of geologists, which are based upon present experience, may be radically modified, when they come to discover the remains of the ancestors of the people whom they now style the cave‐dwellers.

What better illustrates the theory of cycles than the following fact? Nearly 700 years B.C., in the schools of Thales and Pythagoras was taught the doctrine of the true motion of the earth, its form, and the whole heliocentric system. And in 317 A.D., we find Lactantius, the preceptor of Crispus Cæsar, son of Constantine the Great, teaching his pupil that the earth was a plane surrounded by the sky, which is composed of fire and water, and warning him against the heretical doctrine of the earthʹs globular form!

Whenever, in the pride of some new discovery, we throw a look into the past, we find, to our dismay, certain vestiges which indicate the possibility, if not certainty, that the alleged discovery was not totally unknown to the ancients.

It is generally asserted that neither the early inhabitants of the Mosaic times, nor even the more civilized nations of the

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Ptolemaic period were acquainted with electricity. If we remain undisturbed in this opinion, it is not for lack of proofs to the contrary. We may disdain to search for a profounder meaning in some characteristic sentences of Servius, and other writers; we cannot so obliterate them but that, at some future day, that meaning will appear to us in all its significant truths. ʺThe first inhabitants of the earth,ʺ says he, ʺnever carried fire to their altars, but by their prayers they brought down the heavenly fire.ʺ* ʺPrometheus discovered and revealed to man the art of bringing down lightning; and by the method which he taught to them, they brought down fire from the region above.ʺ

If, after pondering these words, we are still willing to attribute them to the phraseology of mythological fables, we may turn to the days of Numa, the king‐philosopher, so renowned for his esoteric learning, and find ourselves more embarrassed to deal with his case. We can neither accuse him of ignorance, superstition, nor credulity; for, if history can be believed at all, he was intently bent on destroying polytheism and idol‐worship. He had so well dissuaded the Romans from idolatry that for nearly two centuries neither statues nor images appeared in their temples. On the other hand old historians tell us that the knowledge which Numa possessed in natural physics was remarkable. Tradition says that he was initiated by the priests of the Etruscan divinities, and instructed by them in the secret of forcing Jupiter, the

* Servius, ʺVirgil,ʺ Eclog. vi., v. 42.

Thunderer, to descend upon earth.† Ovid shows that Jupiter Elicius began to be worshipped by the Romans from that time. Salverte is of the opinion that before Franklin discovered his refined electricity, Numa had experimented with it most successfully, and that Tullus Hostilius was the first victim of the dangerous ʺheavenly guestʺ recorded in history. Titus Livy and Pliny narrate that this prince, having found in the Books of Numa, instructions on the secret sacrifices offered to Jupiter Elicius, made a mistake, and, in consequence of it, ʺhe was struck by lightning and consumed in his own palace.ʺ‡

Salverte remarks that Pliny, in the exposition of Numaʹs scientific secrets, ʺmakes use of expressions which seem to indicate two distinct processesʺ; the one obtained thunder (impetrare), the other forced it to lightning (cogere).§ ʺGuided by Numaʹs book,ʺ says Lucius, quoted by Pliny, ʺTullus undertook to invoke the aid of Jupiter. . . . But having performed the rite imperfectly, he perished, struck by thunder.ʺ** Tracing back the knowledge of thunder and lightning possessed by the Etruscan priests, we find that Tarchon, the founder of the theurgism of the former, desiring to preserve his house from lightning, surrounded it by a hedge of the white bryony,†† a climbing plant which has the

property of averting thunderbolts. Tarchon the theurgist was much anterior to the siege of Troy. The pointed metallic lightning‐rod, for which we are seemingly indebted to Franklin, is probably a rediscovery after all. There are many medals which seem to strongly indicate that the principle was anciently known. The temple of Juno had its roof covered with a quantity of pointed blades of swords.*

If we possess but little proof of the ancients having had any clear notions as to all the effects of electricity, there is very strong evidence, at all events, of their having been perfectly acquainted with electricity itself. ʺBen David,ʺ says the author of The Occult Sciences, ʺhas asserted that Moses possessed some knowledge of the phenomena of electricity.ʺ Professor Hirt, of Berlin, is of this opinion. Michaelis, remarks

— firstly: ʺthat there is no indication that lightning ever struck the temple of Jerusalem, during a thousand years. Secondly, that according to Josephus,† a forest of points . . . of gold, and very sharp, covered the roof of the temple. Thirdly, that this roof communicated with the caverns in the hill upon which the temple was situated, by means of pipes in connection with the gilding which covered all the exterior of the building; in consequence of which the points would act as conductors.ʺ‡

Ammianus Marcellinus, a famous historian of the fourth century, a writer generally esteemed for the fairness and correctness of his statements, tells that ʺThe magi, preserved perpetually in their furnaces fire that they miraculously got from heaven.ʺ§ There is a sentence in the Hindu Oupnek‐hat, which runs thus: ʺTo know fire, the sun, the moon, and lightning, is three‐fourths of the science of God.ʺ**

Finally, Salverte shows that in the days of Ktesias, ʺIndia was acquainted with the use of conductors of lightning.ʺ This historian plainly states that ʺiron placed at the bottom of a fountain . . . and made in the form of a sword, with the point upward, possessed, as soon as it was thus fixed in the ground, the property of averting storms and lightnings.ʺ†† What can be plainer?

Some modern writers deny the fact that a great mirror was placed in the light‐house of the Alexandrian port, for the purpose of discovering vessels at a distance at sea. But the renowned Buffon believed in it; for he honestly confesses that ʺIf the mirror really existed, as I firmly believe it did, to the ancients belong the honor of the invention of the telescope.ʺ‡‡ Stevens, in his work on the East, asserts that he found railroads in Upper Egypt whose grooves were coated with iron. Canova, Powers, and other celebrated sculptors of our modern age deem it an honor to be compared with Pheidias

Professor Jowett discredits the story of the Atlantis, in the Timæus; and the records of 8,000 and 9,000 years appear to him an ancient swindle. But Bunsen remarks: ʺThere is nothing improbable in itself in reminiscences and records of great events in Egypt 9,000 years B.C., for . . . the Origines of Egypt go back to the ninth millennium before Christ.ʺ* Then how about the primitive Cyclopean fortresses of ancient Greece? Can the walls of Tiryns, about which, according to archæological accounts, ʺeven among the ancients it was reported to have been the work of the Cyclops,ʺ† be deemed posterior to the pyramids? Masses of rock, some equal to a cube of six feet, and the smallest of which, Pausanias says, could never be moved by a yoke of oxen, laid up in walls of solid masonry twenty‐five feet thick and over forty feet high, still believed to be the work of men of the races known to our history!

Wilkinsonʹs researches have brought to light the fact that many inventions of what we term modern, and upon which we plume ourselves, were perfected by the ancient Egyptians. The newly‐discovered papyrus of Ebers, the German archæologist, proves that neither our modern chignons, skin‐

* ʺEgyptʹs Place in Universal History,ʺ vol. iv., p. 462.

† ʺArchæologia,ʺ vol. xv., p. 320.

beautifying pearl powders, nor eaux dentifrices were secrets to them. More than one modern physician — even among those who advertise themselves as having ʺmade a speciality of nervous disordersʺ — may find his advantage in consulting the Medical Books of Hermes, which contain prescriptions of real therapeutic value.

The Egyptians, as we have seen, excelled in all arts. They made paper so excellent in quality as to be time‐proof. ʺThey took out the pith of the papyrus,ʺ says our anonymous writer, previously mentioned, ʺdissected and opened the fibre, and flattening it by a process known to them, made it as thin as our foolscap paper, but far more durable. . . . They sometimes cut it into strips and glued it together; many of such written documents are yet in existence.ʺ The papyrus found in the tomb of the queenʹs mummy, and another one found in the sarcophagus of the ʺChambre de la Reine,ʺ at Ghizeh, present the appearance of the finest glossy white muslin, while it possesses the durability of the best calf‐parchment. ʺFor a long time the savants believed the papyrus to have been introduced by Alexander the Great — as they erroneously imagined a good many more things — but Lepsius found rolls of papyri in tombs and monuments of the twelfth dynasty; sculptured pictures of papyri were found later, on monuments of the fourth dynasty, and now it is proved that the art of writing was known and used as early as the days of Menes, the protomonarchʺ; and thus it was finally discovered that the art and their system of writing were perfect and complete from the very first.

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It is to Champollion that we owe the first interpretation of their weird writing; and, but for his life‐long labor, we would till now remain uninformed as to the meaning of all these pictured letters, and the ancients would still be considered ignorant by the moderns whom they so greatly excelled in some arts and sciences. ʺHe was the first to find out what wondrous tale the Egyptians had to tell, for one who could read their endless manuscripts and records. They left them on every spot and object capable of receiving characters. . . .

They engraved, and chiselled, and sculptured them on monuments; they traced them on furniture, rocks, stones, walls, coffins, and tombs, as on the papyrus. . . . The pictures of their daily lives, in their smallest details, are being now unravelled before our dazzled eyes in the most wondrous way. . . . Nothing, of what we know, seems to have been overlooked by the ancient Egyptians. . . . The history of ʹSesostrisʹ shows us how well he and his people were versed in the art and practice of war. . . . The pictures show how formidable they were when encountered in battle. They constructed war‐engines. . . . Horner says that through each of the 100 gates of Thebes issued 200 men with horses and chariots; the latter were magnificently constructed, and very light in comparison with our modern heavy, clumsy, and uncomfortable artillery wagons.ʺ Kenrick describes them in the following terms: ʺIn short, as all the essential principles which regulate the construction and draught of carriages are exemplified in the war‐chariots of the Pharaohs, so there is nothing which modern taste and luxury have devised for

their decoration to which we do not find a prototype in the monuments of the eighteenth dynasty.ʺ Springs — metallic springs — have been found in them, and, notwithstanding Wilkinsonʹs superficial investigation in that direction, and description of these in his studies, we find proofs that such were used to prevent the jolting in the chariots in their too rapid course. The bas‐reliefs show us certain melees and battles in which we can find and trace their uses and customs to the smallest details. The heavily‐armed men fought in coats of mail, the infantry had quilted tunics and felt helmets, with metallic coverings to protect them the better. Muratori, the modern Italian inventor who, some ten years ago, introduced his ʺimpenetrable cuirasse,ʺ has but followed in his invention what he could make out of the ancient method which suggested to him the idea. The process of rendering such objects as card‐board, felt, and other tissues, impenetrable to the cuts and thrusts of any sharp weapon, is now numbered among the lost arts. Muratori succeeded but imperfectly in preparing such felt cuirasses, and, notwithstanding the boasted achievements of modern chemistry he could derive from it no preparation adequate to effect his object, and failed.

ARTS OF WAR AND PEACE

To what perfection chemistry had reached in ancient times, may be inferred from a fact mentioned by Virey. In his dissertations, he shows that Asclepiadotus, a general of Mithradates, reproduced chemically the deleterious

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exhalations of the sacred grotto. These vapors, like those of Cumæ, threw the Pythoness into the mantic frenzy.

Egyptians used bows, double‐edged swords and daggers, javelins, spears, and pikes. The light troops were armed with darts and slings; charioteers wielded maces and battle‐axes; in siege‐operations they were perfect. ʺThe assailants,ʺ says the anonymous writer, ʺadvanced, forming a narrow and long line, the point being protected by a triple‐sided, impenetrable engine pushed before them on a kind of roller, by an invisible squad of men. They had covered underground passages with trap‐doors, scaling ladders, and the art of escalade and military strategy was carried by them to perfection. . . . The battering ram was familiar to them as other things; being such experts in quarrying they knew how to set a mine to a wall and bring it down.ʺ The same writer remarks, that it is a great deal safer for us to mention what the Egyptians did than what they did not know, for every day brings some new discovery of their wonderful knowledge; ʺand if,ʺ he adds, ʺwe were to find out that they used Armstrong guns, this fact would not be much more astonishing than many of the facts brought out to light already.ʺ

The proof that they were proficient in mathematical sciences, lies in the fact that those ancient mathematicians whom we honor as the fathers of geometry went to Egypt to be instructed. Says Professor Smyth, as quoted by Mr. Peebles, ʺthe geometrical knowledge of the pyramid‐builders began where Euclidʹs ended.ʺ Before Greece came into

existence, the arts, with the Egyptians, were ripe and old. Land‐measuring, an art resting on geometry, the Egyptians certainly knew well, as, according to the Bible, Joshua, after conquering the Holy Land, had skill enough to divide it. And how could a people so skilled in natural philosophy as the Egyptians were, not be proportionately skilled in psychology and spiritual philosophy? The temple was the nursery of the highest civilization, and it alone possessed that higher knowledge of magic which was in itself the quintessence of natural philosophy. The occult powers of nature were taught in the greatest secrecy and the most wonderful cures were performed during the performing of the Mysteries. Herodotus acknowledges* that the Greeks learned all they knew, including the sacred services of the temple, from the Egyptians, and because of that, their principal temples were consecrated to Egyptian divinities. Melampus, the famous healer and soothsayer of Argos, had to use his medicines ʺafter the manner of the Egyptians,ʺ from whom he had gained his knowledge, whenever he desired his cure to be thoroughly effective. He healed Iphiclus of his impotency and debility by the rust of iron, according to the directions of Mantis, his magnetic sleeper, or oracle. Sprengel gives many wonderful instances of such magical cures in his History of Medicine (see p. 119).

Diodorus, in his work on the Egyptians (lib. i.), says that Isis has deserved immortality, for all nations of the earth bear

* Lib. ii., c. 50.

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witness to the power of this goddess to cure diseases by her influence. ʺThis is proved,ʺ he says, ʺnot by fable as among the Greeks, but by authentic facts.ʺ Galen records several remedial means which were preserved in the healing wards of the temples. He mentions also a universal medicine which in his time was called Isis.*

The doctrines of several Greek philosophers, who had been instructed in Egypt, demonstrates their profound learning. Orpheus, who, according to Artapanus, was a disciple of Moyses (Moses),† Pythagoras, Herodotus, and Plato owe their philosophy to the same temples in which the wise Solon was instructed by the priests. ʺAntiklides relates,ʺ says Pliny, ʺthat the letters were invented in Egypt by a person whose name was Menon, fifteen years before Phoroneus the most ancient king of Greece.ʺ‡ Jablonski proves that the heliocentric system, as well as the earthʹs sphericity, were known by the priests of Egypt from immemorial ages. ʺThis theory,ʺ he adds, ʺPythagoras took from the Egyptians, who had it from the Brachmans of India.ʺ§ Fenelon, the illustrious Archbishop of Cambray, in his Lives of the Ancient Philosophers, credits Pythagoras with this knowledge, and says that besides teaching his disciples that as the earth was round there were antipodes, since it was inhabited everywhere, the great mathematician was the first

to discover that the morning and evening star was the same. If we now consider that Pythagoras lived in about the 16th Olympiad, over 700 years B.C., and taught this fact at such an early period, we must believe that it was known by others before him. The works of Aristotle, Laërtius, and several others in which Pythagoras is mentioned, demonstrate that he had learned from the Egyptians about the obliquity of the ecliptic, the starry composition of the milky way, and the borrowed light of the moon.

Wilkinson, corroborated later by others, says that the Egyptians divided time, knew the true length of the year, and the precession of the equinoxes. By recording the rising and setting of the stars, they understood the particular influences which proceed from the positions and conjunctions of all heavenly bodies, and therefore their priests, prophesying as accurately as our modern astronomers, meteorological changes, could, en plus, astrologize through astral motions. Though the sober and eloquent Cicero may be partially right in his indignation against the exaggerations of the Babylonian priests, who ʺassert that they have preserved upon monuments observations extending back during an interval of 470,000 years,ʺ** still, the period at which astronomy had arrived at its perfection with the ancients is beyond the reach of modern calculation.

A writer in one of our scientific journals observes ʺthat every science in its growth passes through three stages: First,

** Cicero, ʺDe Divinatione.ʺ

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we have the stage of observation, when facts are collected and registered by many minds in many places. Next, we have the stage of generalization, when these carefully verified facts are arranged methodically, generalized systematically, and classified logically, so as to deduce and elucidate from them the laws that regulate their rule and order. Lastly, we have the stage of prophecy, when these laws are so applied that events can be predicted to occur with unerring accuracy.ʺ If several thousand years B.C., Chinese and Chaldean astronomers predicted eclipses — the latter, whether by the cycle of Saros, or other means, matters not — the fact remains the same. They had reached the last and highest stage of astronomical science — they prophesied. If they could, in the year 1722 B.C., delineate the zodiac with the exact positions of the planets at the time of the autumnal equinox, and so unerringly as Professor Mitchell, the astronomer, proved, then they knew the laws that regulate ʺcarefully‐verified factsʺ to perfection, and applied them with as much certainty as our modern astronomers. Moreover, astronomy is said to be in our century ʺthe only science which has thoroughly reached the last stage . . . other sciences are yet in various stages of growth; electricity, in some branches, has reached the third stage, but in many branches is still in its infantine period.ʺ* This we know, on the exasperating confessions of men of science themselves, and we can entertain no doubt as to this sad reality in the nineteenth century, as we belong ourselves to it. Not so in relation to the men who lived in the

* ʺTelegraphic Journal,ʺ art. Scientific Prophecy.

days of the glory of Chaldæa, Assyria, and Babylon. Of the stages they reached in other sciences we know nothing, except that in astronomy they stood equal with us, for they had also reached the third and last stage. In his lecture on the Lost Arts, Wendell Phillips very artistically describes the situation. ʺWe seem to imagine,ʺ says he, ʺthat whether knowledge will die with us or not, it certainly began with us. . . . We have a pitying estimate, a tender pity for the narrowness, ignorance, and darkness of the bygone ages.ʺ To illustrate our own idea with the closing sentence of the favorite lecturer, we may as well confess that we undertook this chapter, which in one sense interrupts our narrative, to inquire of our men of science, whether they are sure that they are boasting ʺon the right line.ʺ

Thus we read of a people, who, according to some learned writers,† had just emerged from the bronze age into the succeeding age of iron. ʺIf Chaldea, Assyria, and Babylon presented stupendous and venerable antiquities reaching far back into the night of time, Persia was not without her wonders of a later date. The pillared halls of Persepolis were filled with miracles of art — carvings, sculptures, enamels, alabaster libraries, obelisks, sphinxes, colossal bulls. Ecbatana, in Media, the cool summer retreat of the Persian kings, was

† Professor Albrecht Müller, ʺThe First Traces of Man in Europe.ʺ Says the author: ʺAnd this bronze age reaches to and overlaps the beginning of the historic period in some countries, and so includes the great epochs of the Assyrian and Egyptian Empires, B.C. circa 1500, and the earlier eras of the next succeeding age of iron.ʺ

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defended by seven encircling walls of hewn and polished blocks, the interior ones in succession of increasing height, and of different colors, in astrological accordance with the seven planets. The palace was roofed with silver tiles; its beams were plated with gold. At midnight, in its halls, the sun was rivalled by many a row of naphtha cressets. A paradise, that luxury of the monarchs of the East, was planted in the midst of the city. The Persian empire was truly the garden of the world. . . . In Babylon there still remained its walls, once more than sixty miles in compass and, after the ravages of three centuries and three conquerors, still more than eighty feet in height; there were still the ruins of the temple of the cloud‐encompassed Bel; on its top was planted the observatory wherein the weird Chaldean astronomers had held nocturnal communion with the stars; still there were vestiges of the two palaces with their hanging gardens, in which were trees growing in mid‐air, and the wreck of the hydraulic machinery that had supplied them from the river. Into the artificial lake, with its vast apparatus of aqueducts and sluices, the melted snows of the Armenian mountains found their way and were confined in their course through the city by the embankments of the Euphrates. Most wonderful of all, perhaps, was the tunnel under the river‐bed.ʺ*

In his First Traces of Man in Europe, Albrecht Müller proposes a name descriptive of the age in which we live, and suggests that ʺthe age of paperʺ is perhaps as good as any that

can be discussed. We do not agree with the learned professor. Our firm opinion is, that succeeding generations will term ours, at best, the age of brass; at worst, that of albata or of oroide.

The thought of the present‐day commentator and critic as to the ancient learning, is limited to and runs round the exoterism of the temples; his insight is either unwilling or unable to penetrate into the solemn adyta of old, where the hierophant instructed the neophyte to regard the public worship in its true light. No ancient sage would have taught that man is the king of creation, and that the starry heaven and our mother earth were created for his sake. He, who doubts the assertion, may turn to the Magical and Philosophical Precepts of Zoroaster, and find its corroboration in the following:†

ʺDirect not thy mind to the vast measures of the earth; For the plant of truth is not upon ground.
Nor measure the measures of the sun, collecting rules,

For he is carried by the eternal will of the Father, not for your sake,

Dismiss the impetuous course of the moon; For she runs always by work of necessity.

The progression of the stars was not generated for your sake.ʺ

A rather strange teaching to come from those who are universally believed to have worshipped the sun, and moon, and the starry host, as gods. The sublime profundity of the

Magian precepts being beyond the reach of modern materialistic thought, the Chaldean philosophers are accused, together with the ignorant masses, of Sabianism and sun‐ worship.

There was a vast difference between the true worship taught to those who showed themselves worthy, and the state religions. The magians are accused of all kinds of superstition, but this is what a Chaldean Oracle says:

ʺThe wide aërial flight of birds is not true,

Nor the dissections of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys,

The basis of mercenary fraud; flee from these

If you would open the sacred paradise of piety Where virtue, wisdom, and equity, are assembled.ʺ*

Surely, it is not those who warn people against ʺmercenary fraudʺ who can be accused of it; and if they accomplished acts which seem miraculous, who can with fairness presume to deny that it was done merely because they possessed a knowledge of natural philosophy and psychological science to a degree unknown to our schools?

What did they not know? It is a well‐demonstrated fact that the true meridian was correctly ascertained before the first pyramid was built. They had clocks and dials to measure time; their cubit was the established unit of linear measure, being 1,707 feet of English measure; according to Herodotus the unit of weight was also known; as money, they had gold

* Psellus, ʺZoroast. Oracles,ʺ 4.

and silver rings valued by weight; they had the decimal and duodecimal modes of calculation from the earliest times, and were proficient in algebra. ʺHow could they otherwise,ʺ says an unknown author, ʺbring into operation such immense mechanical powers, if they had not thoroughly understood the philosophy of what we term the mechanical powers?ʺ

The art of making linen and fine fabrics is also proved to have been one of their branches of knowledge, for the Bible speaks of it. Joseph was presented by Pharaoh with a vesture of fine linen, a golden chain, and many more things. The linen of Egypt was famous throughout the world. The mummies are all wrapped in it and the linen is beautifully preserved. Pliny speaks of a certain garment sent 600 years B.C., by King Amasis to Lindus, every single thread of which was composed of 360 minor threads twisted together. Herodotus gives us (book i.), in his account of Isis and the Mysteries performed in her honor, an idea of the beauty and ʺadmirable softness of the linen worn by the priests.ʺ The latter wore shoes made of papyrus and garments of fine linen, because this goddess first taught the use of it; and thus, besides being called Isiaci, or priests of Isis, they were also known as Linigera, or the ʺlinen‐wearing.ʺ This linen was spun and dyed in those brilliant and gorgeous colors, the secret of which is likewise now among the lost arts. On the mummies we often find the most beautiful embroidery and bead‐work ornamenting their shirts; several of such can be seen in the museum of Bulak (Cairo), and are unsurpassable in beauty; the designs are exquisite, and the labor seems

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immense. The elaborate and so much vaunted Gobelins tapestry, is but a gross production when compared with some of the embroidery of the ancient Egyptians. We have but to refer to Exodus to discover how skilful was the workmanship of the Israelitish pupils of the Egyptians upon their tabernacle and sacred ark. The sacerdotal vestments, with their decorations of ʺpomegranates and golden bells,ʺ and the thummim, or jewelled breastplate of the high priest, are described by Josephus as being of unparalleled beauty and of wonderful workmanship; and yet we find beyond doubt that the Jews adopted their rites and ceremonies, and even the special dress of their Levites, from the Egyptians. Clemens Alexandrinus acknowledges it very reluctantly, and so does Origen and other Fathers of the Church, some of whom, as a matter of course, attribute the coincidence to a clever trick of Satan in anticipation of events. Proctor, the astronomer, says in one of his books, ʺThe remarkable breastplate worn by the Jewish high priest was derived directly from the Egyptians.ʺ The word thummim itself is evidently of Egyptian origin, borrowed by Moses, like the rest; for further on the same page, Mr. Proctor says that, ʺIn the often‐repeated picture of judgment the deceased Egyptian is seen conducted by the god Horus (?), while Anubis places on one of the balances a vase supposed to contain his good actions, and in the other is the emblem of truth, a representation of Thmei, the goddess of truth, which was also worn on the judicial breastplate.ʺ Wilkinson, in his Manners and Customs of the Ancient

Egyptians, shows that the Hebrew thummim is a plural form of the word Thmèi.ʺ*

All the ornamental arts seem to have been known to the Egyptians. Their jewelry of gold, silver, and precious stones are beautifully wrought; so was the cutting, polishing, and setting of them executed by their lapidaries in the finest style. The finger‐ring of an Egyptian mummy — if we remember aright — was pronounced the most artistic piece of jewelry in the London Exhibition of 1851. Their imitation of precious stones in glass is far above anything done at the present day; and the emerald may be said to have been imitated to perfection.

In Pompeii, says Wendell Phillips, they discovered a room full of glass; there was ground‐glass, window‐glass, cut‐glass, and colored‐glass of every variety. Catholic priests who broke into China 200 years ago, were shown a glass, transparent and colorless, which was filled with liquor made by the Chinese, and which appeared to be colorless like water. ʺThis liquor was poured into the glass, and then looking through, it seemed to be filled with fishes. They turned it out and repeated the experiment and again it was filled with fishes.ʺ In Rome they show a bit of glass, a transparent glass, which they light up so as to show you that there is nothing concealed, but in the centre of the glass is a drop of colored glass, perhaps as large as a pea, mottled like a duck, and which even a miniature pencil could not do more perfectly.

* Proctor, ʺSaturn and the Sabbath of the Jews,ʺ p. 309.

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ʺIt is manifest that this drop of liquid glass must have been poured, because there is no joint. This must have been done by a greater heat than the annealing process, because that process shows breaks.ʺ In relation to their wonderful art of imitating precious stones, the lecturer speaks of the ʺcelebrated vase of the Genoa Cathedral,ʺ which was considered for long centuries ʺa solid emerald.ʺ ʺThe Roman Catholic legend of it was that it was one of the treasures that the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon, and that it was the identical cup out of which the Saviour drank at the Last Supper.ʺ Subsequently it was found not to be an emerald, but an imitation; and when Napoleon brought it to Paris and gave it to the Institute, the scientists were obliged to confess that it was not a stone, and that they could not tell what it was.

Further, speaking of the skill of the ancients in metal works, the same lecturer narrates that ʺwhen the English plundered the Summer Palace of the Emperor of China, the European artists were surprised at seeing the curiously‐ wrought metal vessels of every kind, far exceeding all the boasted skill of the workmen of Europe.ʺ African tribes in the interior of the country gave travellers better razors than they had. ʺGeorge Thompson told me,ʺ he adds, ʺhe saw a man in Calcutta throw a handful of floss silk into the air, and a Hindu sever it into pieces with his sabre of native steel.ʺ He concludes by the apt remark that ʺthe steel is the greatest triumph of metallurgy, and metallurgy is the glory of chemistry.ʺ So with the ancient Egyptians and Semitic races.

They dug gold and separated it with the utmost skill. Copper, lead, and iron were found in abundance near the Red Sea.

In a lecture delivered in 1873, on the Cave‐Men of Devonshire, Mr. W. Pengelly, F.R.S., stated on the authority of some Egyptologists that the first iron used in Egypt was meteoric iron, as the earliest mention of this metal is found in an Egyptian document, in which it is called the ʺstone from heaven.ʺ This would imply the idea that the only iron which was in use in days of old was meteorite. This may have been the case at the commencement of the period embraced in our present geological explorations, but till we can compute with at least approximate accuracy the age of our excavated relics, who can tell but that we are making a blunder of possibly several hundred thousand years? The injudiciousness of dogmatizing upon what the ancient Chaldeans and Egyptians did not know about mining and metallurgy is at least partially shown by the discoveries of Colonel Howard Vyse. Moreover, many of such precious stones as are only found at a great depth in mines are mentioned in Homer and the Hebrew Scriptures. Have scientists ascertained the precise time when mining‐shafts were first sunk by mankind? According to Dr. A. C. Hamlin, in India, the arts of the goldsmith and lapidary have been practiced from an ʺunknown antiquity.ʺ That the Egyptians either knew from the remotest ages how to temper steel, or possessed something still better and more perfect than the implement necessary in our days for chiselling, is an alternative from which the archæologists cannot escape. How else could they

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have produced such artistic chiselling, or wrought such sculpture as they did? The critics may take their choice of either; according to them, steel tools of the most exquisite temper, or some other means of cutting sienite, granite, and basalt; which, in the latter case, must be added to the long catalogue of lost arts.

Professor Albrecht Müller says: ʺWe may ascribe the introduction of bronze manufacture into Europe to a great race immigrant from Asia some 6,000 years ago, called Aryas or Aryans. . . . Civilization of the East preceded that of the West by many centuries. . . . There are many proofs that a considerable degree of culture existed at its very beginning. Bronze was yet in use, but iron as well. Pottery was not only shaped on the lathe, but burned a good red. Manufactures in glass, gold, and silver, are found for the first time. In lonely mountain places are yet found dross, and the remains of iron‐ furnaces. . . . To be sure, this dross is sometimes ascribed to volcanic action, but it is met with where volcanoes never could have existed.ʺ

But it is in the process of preparing mummies that the skill of this wonderful people is exemplified in the highest degree. None but those who have made special study of the subject, can estimate the amount of skill, patience, and knowledge exacted for the accomplishment of this indestructible work, which occupied several months. Both chemistry and surgery were called into requisition. The mummies, if left in the dry climate of Egypt, seem to be practicably imperishable; and even when removed after a repose of several thousand years,

show no signs of change. ʺThe body,ʺ says the anonymous writer, ʺwas filled with myrrh, cassia, and other gums, and after that, saturated with natron. . . . Then followed the marvellous swathing of the embalmed body, so artistically executed, that professional modern bandagists are lost in admiration at its excellency.ʺ Says Dr. Grandville: ʺ . . . there is not a single form of bandage known to modern surgery, of which far better and cleverer examples are not seen in the swathings of the Egyptian mummies. The strips of linen are found without one single joint, extending to 1,000 yards in length.ʺ Rossellini, in Kenrickʹs Ancient Egypt, gives a similar testimony to the wonderful variety and skill with which the bandages have been applied and interlaced. There was not a fracture in the human body that could not be repaired successfully by the sacerdotal physician of those remote days.

Who but well remembers the excitement produced some twenty‐five years ago by the discovery of anæsthesia? The nitrous oxide gas, sulphuric and chloric ether, chloroform, ʺlaughing gas,ʺ besides various other combinations of these, were welcomed as so many heavenly blessings to the suffering portion of humanity. Poor Dr. Horace Wells, of Hartford, in 1844, was the discoverer, and Drs. Morton and Jackson reaped the honors and benefits in 1846, as is usual in such cases. The anaesthetics were proclaimed ʺthe greatest discovery ever made.ʺ And, though the famous Letheon of Morton and Jackson (a compound of sulphuric ether), the chloroform of Sir James Y. Simpson, and the nitrous oxide gas, introduced by Colton, in 1843, and by Dunham and

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Smith, were occasionally checked by fatal cases, it still did not prevent these gentlemen from being considered public benefactors. The patients successfully put to sleep sometimes awoke no more; what matters that, so long as others were relieved? Physicians assure us that accidents are now but rarely apprehended. Perhaps it is because the beneficent anaesthetic agents are so parsimoniously applied as to fail in their effects one‐half of the time, leaving the sufferer paralyzed for a few seconds in his external movements, but feeling the pain as acutely as ever. On the whole, however, chloroform and laughing gas are beneficent discoveries. But, are they the first anesthetics ever discovered, strictly speaking? Dioscorides speaks of the stone of Memphis (lapis Memphiticus), and describes it as a small pebble — round, polished, and very sparkling. When ground into powder, and applied as an ointment to that part of the body on which the surgeon was about to operate, either with his scalpel or fire, it preserved that part, and only that part from any pain of the operation. In the meantime, it was perfectly harmless to the constitution of the patient, who retained his consciousness throughout, in no way dangerous from its effects, and acted so long as it was kept on the affected part. When taken in a mixture of wine or water, all feeling of suffering was perfectly deadened.* Pliny gives also a full description of it.†

From time immemorial, the Brahmans have had in their possession secrets quite as valuable. The widow, bent on the

* Dioscorides, “Περι Ύλης Ιατρικἣς,” lib. v., cap. clviii.

† Pliny, ʺHistoire Naturelle,ʺ lib. xxxviii., cap. vii.

self‐sacrifice of concremation, called Sahamaranya, has no dread of suffering the least pain, for the fiercest flames will consume her, without one pang of agony being experienced by her. The holy plants which crown her brow, as she is conducted in ceremony to the funeral pile; the sacred root culled at the midnight hour on the spot where the Ganges and the Yumna mingle their waters; and the process of anointing the body of the self‐appointed victim with ghee and sacred oils, after she has bathed in all her clothes and finery, are so many magical anæsthetics. Supported by those she is going to part with in body, she walks thrice around her fiery couch, and, after bidding them farewell, is cast on the dead body of her husband, and leaves this world without a single moment of suffering. ʺThe semi‐fluid,ʺ says a missionary writer, an eye‐witness of several such ceremonies

— ʺthe ghee, is poured upon the pile; it is instantly inflamed, and the drugged widow dies quickly of suffocation before the fire reaches her body.ʺ‡

No such thing, if the sacred ceremony is only conducted strictly after the prescribed rites. The widows are never drugged in the sense we are accustomed to understand the word. Only precautionary measures are taken against a useless physical martyrdom — the atrocious agony of burning. Her mind is as free and clear as ever, and even more so. Firmly believing in the promises of a future life, her whole mind is absorbed in the contemplation of the approaching

bliss — the beatitude of ʺfreedom,ʺ which she is about to attain. She generally dies with the smile of heavenly rapture on her countenance; and if some one is to suffer at the hour of retribution, it is not the earnest devotee of her faith, but the crafty Brahmans who know well enough that no such ferocious rite was ever prescribed.* As to the victim, after having been consumed, she becomes a sati — transcendent purity — and is canonized after death.

Egypt is the birthplace and the cradle of chemistry. Kenrick shows the root of the word to be chemi or chem, which was the name of the country (Psalms cv. 27). The chemistry of colors seems to have been thoroughly well known in that country. Facts are facts. Where among our painters are we to search for the artist who can decorate our walls with imperishable colors? Ages after our pigmy buildings will have crumbled into dust, and the cities

* Max Müller, Professor Wilson, and H. J. Bushby, with several other Sanscrit students, prove that ʺOriental scholars, both native and European, have shown that the rite of widow‐burning was not only unsanctionable but imperatively forbidden by the earliest and most authoritative Hindu Scripturesʺ (ʺWidow‐burning,ʺ p. 21). See Max Müllerʹs ʺComparative Mythology.ʺ ʺProfessor Wilson,ʺ says Max Müller, ʺwas the first to point out the falsification of the text and the change of ʹyonim agreʹ into ʹyonim agneʹ (womb of fire). . . . According to the hymns of the ʹRig‐Veda,ʹ and the Vaidic ceremonial contained in the ʹGrihya‐ Sutras,ʹ the wife accompanies the corpse of the husband to the funeral pile, but she is there addressed with a verse taken from the ʹRig‐Veda,ʹ and ordered to leave her husband, and to return to the world of the livingʺ (ʺComparative Mythology,ʺ p. 35).

enclosing them will themselves have become shapeless heaps of brick and mortar, with forgotten names — long after that will the halls of Karnak and Luxor (El‐Uxor) be still standing; and the gorgeous mural paintings of the latter will doubtless be as bright and vivid 4,000 years hence, as they were 4,000 years ago, and are to‐day. ʺEmbalming and fresco‐painting,ʺ says our author, ʺwas not a chance discovery with the Egyptians, but brought out from definitions and maxims like any induction of Faraday.ʺ

Our modern Italians boast of their Etruscan vases and paintings; the decorative borders found on Greek vases provoke the admiration of the lovers of antiquity, and are ascribed to the Greeks, while in fact ʺthey were but copies from the Egyptian vases.ʺ Their figures can be found any day on the walls of a tomb of the age of Amunoph I., a period at which Greece was not even in existence.

Where, in our age, can we point to anything comparable to the rock‐temples of Ipsambul in Lower Nubia? There may be seen sitting figures seventy feet high, carved out of the living rock. The torso of the statue of Rameses II., at Thebes, measures sixty feet around the shoulders, and elsewhere in proportion. Beside such titanic sculpture our own seems that of pigmies. Iron was known to the Egyptians at least long before the construction of the first pyramid, which is over 20,000 years ago, according to Bunsen. The proof of this had remained hidden for many thousands of years in the pyramid of Cheops, until Colonel Howard Vyse found it in the shape of a piece of iron, in one of the joints, where it had evidently been placed

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at the time this pyramid was first built. Egyptologists adduce many indications that the ancients were perfectly well acquainted with metallurgy in prehistoric times. ʺTo this day we can find at Sinai large heaps of scoriæ, produced by smelting.ʺ* Metallurgy and chemistry, as practiced in those days, were known as alchemy, and were at the bottom of prehistoric magic. Moreover, Moses proved his knowledge of alchemical chemistry by pulverizing the golden calf, and strewing the powder upon the water.

If now we turn to navigation, we will find ourselves able to prove, on good authorities, that Necho II. fitted out a fleet on the Red Sea and despatched it for exploration. The fleet was absent above two years and instead of returning through the Straits of Babelmandeb, as was wont, sailed back through the Straits of Gibraltar. Herodotus was not at all swift to concede to the Egyptians a maritime achievement so vast as this. They had, he says, been spreading the report that ʺreturning homewards, they had the sunrise on their right hands; a thing which to me is incredible.ʺ ʺAnd yet,ʺ remarks the author of the heretofore‐mentioned article, ʺthis incredible assertion is now proved incontestable, as may well be understood by any one who has doubled the Cape of Good Hope.ʺ Thus it is proved that the most ancient of these people performed a feat which was attributed to Columbus many ages later. They say they anchored twice on their way; sowed corn, reaped it and, sailing away, steered in triumph through

* Hence the story that Moses fabricated there the serpent or seraph of brass which the Israelites worshipped till the reign of Hezekiah.

the Pillars of Hercules and eastward along the Mediterranean. ʺThere was a people,ʺ he adds, ʺmuch more deserving of the term ʹveteresʹ than the Romans and Greeks. The Greeks, young in their knowledge, sounded a trumpet before these and called upon all the world to admire their ability. Old Egypt, grown gray in her wisdom, was so secure of her acquirements that she did not invite admiration and cared no more for the opinion of the flippant Greek than we do to‐day for that of a Feejee islander.ʺ

ʺO Solon, Solon,ʺ said the oldest Egyptian priest to that sage. ʺYou Greeks are ever childish, having no ancient opinion, no discipline of any long standing!ʺ And very much surprised, indeed, was the great Solon, when he was told by the priests of Egypt that so many gods and goddesses of the Grecian Pantheon were but the disguised gods of Egypt. Truly spoke Zonaras: ʺAll these things came to us from Chaldea to Egypt; and from thence were derived to the Greeks.ʺ

Sir David Brewster gives a glowing description of several automata; and the eighteenth century takes pride in that masterpiece of mechanical art, the ʺflute‐player of Vaucanson.ʺ The little we can glean of positive information on that subject, from ancient writers, warrants the belief that the learned mechanicians in the days of Archimedes, and some of them much anterior to the great Syracusan, were in no wise more ignorant or less ingenious than our modern inventors. Archytas, a native of Tarentum, in Italy, the instructor of Plato, a philosopher distinguished for his

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mathematical achievements and wonderful discoveries in practical mechanics, constructed a wooden dove. It must have been an extraordinarily ingenious mechanism, as it flew, fluttered its wings, and sustained itself for a considerable time in the air. This skilful man, who lived 400 years B.C., invented besides the wooden dove, the screw, the crane, and various hydraulic machines.*

Egypt pressed her own grapes and made wine. Nothing remarkable in that, so far, but she brewed her own beer, and in great quantity — our Egyptologist goes on to say. The Ebers manuscript proves now, beyond doubt, that the Egyptians used beer 2,000 years B.C. Their beer must have been strong and excellent — like everything they did. Glass was manufactured in all its varieties. In many of the Egyptian sculptures we find scenes of glass‐blowing and bottles; occasionally, during archæological researches, glasses and glassware are found, and very beautiful they seem to have been. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that the Egyptians cut, ground, and engraved glass, and possessed the art of introducing gold between the two surfaces of the substance. They imitated with glass, pearls, emeralds, and all the precious stones to a great perfection.

Likewise, the most ancient Egyptians cultivated the musical arts, and understood well the effect of musical harmony and its influence on the human spirit. We can find on the oldest sculptures and carvings scenes in which

* A. Gell, ʺNoet. Attic.,ʺ lib. x., cap. xiii.

musicians play on various instruments. Music was used in the Healing Department of the temples for the cure of nervous disorders. We discover on many monuments men playing in bands in concert; the leader beating time by clapping his hands. Thus far we can prove that they understood the laws of harmony. They had their sacred music, domestic and military. The lyre, harp, and flute were used for the sacred concerts; for festive occasions they had the guitar, the single and double pipes, and castanets; for troops, and during military service, they had trumpets, tambourines, drums, and cymbals.

Various kinds of harps were invented by them, such as the lyre, sambuc, ashur; some of these had upward of twenty strings. The superiority of the Egyptian lyre over the Grecian is an admitted fact. The material out of which were made such instruments was often of very costly and rare wood, and they were beautifully carved; they imported it sometimes from very distant countries; some were painted, inlaid with mother‐of‐pearl, and ornamented with colored leather. They used catgut for strings as we do. Pythagoras learned music in Egypt and made a regular science of it in Italy. But the Egyptians were generally considered in antiquity as the best music‐teachers in Greece. They understood thoroughly well how to extract harmonious sounds out of an instrument by adding strings to it, as well as the multiplication of notes by shortening the strings upon its neck; which knowledge shows a great progress in the musical art. Speaking of harps, in a tomb at Thebes, Bruce remarks that, ʺthey overturn all the

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accounts hitherto given of the earliest state of music and musical instruments in the East, and are altogether, in their form, ornaments and compass, an incontestable proof, stronger than a thousand Greek quotations, that geometry, drawing, mechanics, and music were at the greatest perfection when these instruments were made; and that the period from which we date the invention of these arts was only the beginning of the era of their restoration.ʺ

On the walls of the palace of Amenoph II. at Thebes, the king is represented as playing chess with the queen. This monarch reigned long before the Trojan war. In India the game is known to have been played at least 5,000 years ago.

As to their knowledge in medicine, now that one of the lost Books of Hermes has been found and translated by Ebers, the Egyptians can speak for themselves. That they understood about the circulation of the blood, appears certain from the healing manipulations of the priests, who knew how to draw blood downward, stop its circulation for awhile, etc. A more careful study of their bas‐reliefs representing scenes taking place in the healing hall of various temples will easily demonstrate it. They had their dentists and oculists, and no doctor was allowed to practice more than one specialty; which certainly warrants the belief that they lost fewer patients in those days than our physicians do now. It is also asserted by some authorities that the Egyptians were the first people in the world who introduced trial by jury; although we doubt this ourselves.

MEXICAN MYTHS AND RUINS

But the Egyptians were not the only people of remote epochs whose achievements place them in so commanding a position before the view of posterity. Besides others whose history is at present shut in behind the mists of antiquity — such as the prehistoric races of the two Americas, of Crete, of the Troad, of the Lacustrians, of the submerged continent of the fabled Atlantis, now classed with myths — the deeds of the Phœnicians stamp them with almost the character of demi‐gods.

The writer in the National Quarterly Review, previously quoted, says that the Phœnicians were the earliest navigators of the world, founded most of the colonies of the Mediterranean, and voyaged to whatever other regions were inhabited. They visited the Arctic regions, whence they brought accounts of eternal days without a night, which Homer has preserved for us in the Odyssey. From the British Isles they imported tin into Africa, and Spain was a favorite site for their colonies. The description of Charybdis so completely answers to the maëlstrom that, as this writer says: ʺIt is difficult to imagine it to have had any other prototype.ʺ Their explorations, it seems, extended in every direction, their sails whitening the Indian Ocean, as well as the Norwegian fiords. Different writers have accorded to them the settlement of remote localities; while the entire southern coast of the Mediterranean was occupied by their cities. A large portion of the African territory is asserted to have been peopled by the races expelled by Joshua and the children of Israel. At the

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time when Procopius wrote, columns stood in Mauritania Tingitana, which bore the inscription, in Phœnician characters, ʺWe are those who fled before the brigand Joshua, the son of Nun or Nave.ʺ

Some suppose these hardy navigators of Arctic and Antarctic waters have been the progenitors of the races which built the temples and palaces of Palenque and Uxmal, of Copan and Arica.* Brasseur de Bourbourg gives us much information about the manners and customs, architecture and arts, and especially of the magic and magicians of the ancient Mexicans. He tells us that Votan, their fabulous hero and the greatest of their magicians, returning from a long voyage, visited King Solomon at the time of the building of the temple. This Votan appears to be identical with the dreaded Quetzo‐Cohuatl who appears in all the Mexican legends; and curiously enough these legends bear a striking resemblance, insomuch as they relate to the voyages and exploits of the Hittim, with the Hebrew Bible accounts of the Hivites, the descendants of Heth, son of Chanaan. The record tells us that Votan ʺfurnished to Solomon the most valuable particulars as to the men, animals, and plants, the gold and precious woods of the Occident,ʺ but refused point‐blank to afford any clew to the route he sailed, or the manner of reaching the mysterious continent. Solomon himself gives an account of this interview in his History of the Wonders of the Universe, the chief Votan figuring under the allegory of the Navigating

* Such is not our opinion. They were probably built by the Atlanteans.

Serpent. Stephens, indulging in the anticipation ʺthat a key surer than that of the Rosetta‐stone will be discovered,ʺ by which the American hieroglyphs may be read,† says that the descendants of the Caciques and the Aztec subjects are believed to survive still in the inaccessible fastnesses of the Cordilleras ʺwildernesses, which have never yet been penetrated by a white man, . . . living as their fathers did, erecting the same buildings . . . with ornaments of sculpture and plastered; large courts, and lofty towers with high ranges of steps, and still carving on tablets of stone the same mysterious hieroglyphics.ʺ He adds, ʺI turn to that vast and unknown region, untraversed by a single road, wherein fancy pictures that mysterious city seen from the topmost range of the Cordilleras of unconquered, unvisited, and unsought aboriginal inhabitants.ʺ

Apart from the fact that this mysterious city has been seen from a great distance by daring travellers, there is no intrinsic improbability of its existence, for who can tell what became of the primitive people who fled before the rapacious brigands of Cortez and Pizarro? Dr. Tschuddi, in his work on Peru, tells us of an Indian legend that a train of 10,000 llamas, laden with gold to complete the unfortunate Incaʹs ransom, was arrested in the Andes by the tidings of his death, and the enormous treasure was so effectually concealed that not a trace of it has ever been found. He, as well as Prescott and other writers, informs us that the Indians to this day preserve

their ancient traditions and sacerdotal caste, and obey implicitly the orders of rulers chosen among themselves, while at the same time nominally Catholics and actually subject to the Peruvian authorities. Magical ceremonies practiced by their forefathers still prevail among them, and magical phenomena occur. So persistent are they in their loyalty to the past, that it seems impossible but that they should be in relations with some central source of authority which constantly supports and strengthens their faith, keeping it alive. May it not be that the sources of this undying faith lie in this mysterious city, with which they are in secret communication? Or must we think that all of the above is again but a ʺcurious coincidenceʺ?

The story of this mysterious city was told to Stephens by a Spanish Padre, in 1838‐9. The priest swore to him that he had seen it with his own eyes, and gave Stephens the following details, which the traveller firmly believed to be true. ʺThe Padre of the little village near the ruins of Santa Cruz del Quichè, had heard of the unknown city at the village of Chajul. . . . He was then young, and climbed with much labor to the naked summit of the topmost ridge of the sierra of the Cordillera. When arrived at a height of ten or twelve thousand feet, he looked over an immense plain extending to Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico, and saw, at a great distance, a large city spread over a great space, and with turrets white and glittering in the sun. Tradition says that no white man has ever reached this city; that the inhabitants speak the Maya language, know that strangers have conquered their

whole land, and murder any white man who attempts to enter their territory. . . . They have no coin; no horses, cattle, mules, or other domestic animals except fowls, and the cocks they keep underground to prevent their crowing being heard.ʺ

Nearly the same was given us personally about twenty years ago, by an old native priest, whom we met in Peru, and with whom we happened to have business relations. He had passed all his life vainly trying to conceal his hatred toward the conquerors — ʺbrigands,ʺ he termed them; and, as he confessed, kept friends with them and the Catholic religion for the sake of his people, but he was as truly a sun‐ worshipper in his heart as ever he was. He had travelled in his capacity of a converted native missionary, and had been at Santa Cruz, and, as he solemnly affirmed, had been also to see some of his people by a ʺsubterranean passageʺ leading into the mysterious city. We believe his account; for a man who is about to die, will rarely stop to invent idle stories; and this one we have found corroborated in Stephenʹs Travels. Besides, we know of two other cities utterly unknown to European travellers; not that the inhabitants particularly desire to hide themselves; for people from Buddhistic countries come occasionally to visit them. But their towns are not set down on the European or Asiatic maps; and, on account of the too zealous and enterprising Christian missionaries, and perhaps for more mysterious reasons of their own, the few natives of other countries who are aware of the existence of these two cities never mention them.

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Nature has provided strange nooks and hiding‐places for her favorites; and unfortunately it is but far away from so‐called civilized countries that man is free to worship the Deity in the way that his fathers did.

Even the erudite and sober Max Müller is somehow unable to get rid of coincidences. To him they come in the shape of the most unexpected discoveries. These Mexicans, for instance, whose obscure origin, according to the laws of probability, has no connection with the Aryans of India, nevertheless, like the Hindus, represent an eclipse of the moon as ʺthe moon being devoured by a dragon.ʺ* And though Professor Müller admits that an historical intercourse between the two people was suspected by Alexander von Humboldt, and he himself considers it possible, still the occurrence of such a fact he adds, ʺneed not be the result of any historical intercourse. As we have stated above, the origin of the aborigines of America is a very vexed question for those interested in tracing out the affiliation and migrations of peoples.ʺ Notwithstanding the labor of Brasseur de Bourbourg, and his elaborate translation of the famous Popol‐Vuh, alleged to be written by Ixtlilxochitl, after weighing its contents, the antiquarian remains as much in the dark as ever. We have read the Popol‐Vuh in its original translation, and the review of the same by Max Müller, and out of the former find shining a light of such brightness, that it is no wonder that the matter‐of‐fact, skeptical scientists

should be blinded by it. But so far as an author can be judged by his writings, Professor Max Müller is no unfair skeptic; and, moreover, very little of importance escapes his attention. How is it then that a man of such immense and rare erudition, accustomed as he is to embrace at one eagle glance the traditions, religious customs, and superstitions of a people, detecting the slightest similarity, and taking in the smallest details, failed to give any importance or perhaps even suspect what the humble author of the present volume, who has neither scientific training nor erudition, to any extent, apprehended at first view? Fallacious and unwarranted as to many may seem this remark, it appears to us that science loses more than she gains by neglecting the ancient and even mediæval esoteric literature, or rather what remains of it. To one who devotes himself to such study many a coincidence is transformed into a natural result of demonstrable antecedent causes. We think we can see how it is that Professor Müller confesses that ʺnow and then . . . one imagines one sees certain periods and landmarks, but in the next page all is chaos again.ʺ† May it not be barely possible that this chaos is intensified by the fact that most of the scientists, directing the whole of their attention to history, skip that which they treat as ʺvague, contradictory, miraculous, absurd.ʺ Notwithstanding the feeling that there was ʺa groundwork of noble conceptions which has been covered and distorted by an aftergrowth of fantastic

nonsense,ʺ Professor Müller cannot help comparing this nonsense to the tales of the Arabian Nights.

Far be from us the ridiculous pretension of criticising a scientist so worthy of admiration for his learning as Max Müller. But we cannot help saying that even among the fantastic nonsense of the Arabian Nightsʹ Entertainments anything would be worthy of attention, if it should help toward the evolving of some historical truth. Homerʹs Odyssey surpasses in fantastic nonsense all the tales of the Arabian Nights combined; and notwithstanding that, many of his myths are now proved to be something else besides the creation of the old poetʹs fancy. The Læstrygonians, who devoured the companions of Ulysses, are traced to the huge cannibal* race, said in primitive days to inhabit the caves of Norway. Geology verified through her discoveries some of the assertions of Homer, supposed for so many ages to have been but poetical hallucinations. The perpetual daylight enjoyed by this race of Læstrygonians indicates that they were inhabitants of the North Cape, where, during the whole summer, there is perpetual daylight. The Norwegian fiords are perfectly described by Homer in his Odyssey, x. 110 ; and the gigantic stature of the Læstrygonians is demonstrated by human bones of unusual size found in caves situated near this region, and which the geologists suppose to have belonged to a race extinct long before the Aryan immigration. Charybdis, as we have seen, has been recognized in the

* Why not to the sacrifices of men in ancient worship?

maëlstrom; and the Wandering Rocks† in the enormous icebergs of the Arctic seas.

If the consecutive attempts at the creation of man described in the Quiche Cosmogony suggests no comparison with some Apocrypha, with the Jewish sacred books, and the kabalistic theories of creation, it is indeed strange. Even the Book of Jasher, condemned as a gross forgery of the twelfth century, may furnish more than one clew to trace a relation between the population of Ur of the Kasdeans, where Magism flourished before the days of Abraham, and those of Central and North America. The divine beings, ʺbrought down to the level of human nature,ʺ performed no feats or tricks more strange or incredible than the miraculous performances of Moses and of Pharaohʹs magicians, while many of these are exactly similar in their nature. And when, moreover, in addition to this latter fact, we find so great a resemblance between certain kabalistic terms common to both hemispheres, there must be something else than mere accident to account for the circumstance. Many of such feats have clearly a common parentage. The story of the two brothers of Central America, who, before starting on their journey to Xibalba, ʺplant each a cane in the middle of their grandmotherʹs house, that she may know by its flourishing or withering whether they are alive or dead,ʺ‡ finds its analogy in the beliefs of many other countries. In the Popular Tales and Traditions, by Sacharoff (Russia), one can find a similar

† ʺOdyssey,ʺ xii. 71.

‡ ʺChips from a German Workshop,ʺ p. 268.

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narrative, and trace this belief in various other legends. And yet these fairy tales were current in Russia many centuries before America was discovered.

In recognizing in the gods of Stonehenge the divinities of Delphos and Babylon, one need feel little surprised. Bel and the Dragon, Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, are all one under many names, and have travelled far and wide. The Both‐al of Ireland points directly to its first parent, the Batylos of the Greeks and the Beth‐el of Chanaan. ʺHistory,ʺ says H. de la Villemarque, ʺwhich took no notes at those distant ages, can plead ignorance, but the science of languages affirms. Philology, with a daily‐increasing probability, has again linked together the chain hardly broken between the Orient and the Occident.ʺ*

No more remarkable is the discovery of a like resemblance between the Oriental myths and ancient Russian tales and traditions, for it is entirely natural to look for a similarity between the beliefs of the Semitic and Aryan families. But when we discover an almost perfect identity between the character of Zarevna Militrissa, with a moon in her forehead, who is in constant danger of being devoured by Zmeÿ Gorenetch (the Serpent or Dragon), who plays such a prominent part in all popular Russian tales, and similar characters in the Mexican legends — extending to the

minutest details — we may well pause and ask ourselves whether there be not here more than a simple coincidence.

This tradition of the Dragon and the Sun — occasionally replaced by the Moon — has awakened echoes in the remotest parts of the world. It may be accounted for with perfect readiness by the once universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when Asia, Europe, Africa, and America were covered with the temples sacred to the sun and the dragons. The priests assumed the names of their deities, and thus the tradition of these spread like a net‐work all over the globe: ʺBel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his god.ʺ† But still, ʺif the original conception is natural and intelligible . . . and its occurrence need not be the result of any historical intercourse,ʺ as Professor Müller tells us, the details are so strikingly similar that we cannot feel satisfied that the riddle is entirely solved. The origin of this universal symbolical worship being concealed in the night of time, we would have far more chance to arrive at the truth by tracing these traditions to their very source. And where is this source? Kircher places the origin of the Ophite and heliolatrous worship, the shape of conical monuments and the obelisks, with the Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus.‡ Where, then, except in Hermetic books, are we to seek for the desired information? Is it likely that modern authors can know more, or as much, of ancient myths and cults as the

† ʺArchæol.,ʺ vol. xxv., p. 220. London.

‡ ʺArchæol.,ʺ vol. xxv., p. 292. London.

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men who taught them to their contemporaries? Clearly two things are necessary: first, to find the missing books of Hermes; and second, the key by which to understand them, for reading is not sufficient. Failing in this, our savants are abandoned to unfruitful speculations, as for a like reason geographers waste their energies in a vain quest of the sources of the Nile. Truly the land of Egypt is another abode of mystery!

RESEMBLANCES TO THE EGYPTIAN

Without stopping to discuss whether Hermes was the ʺPrince of post‐diluvian magic,ʺ as des Mousseaux calls him, or the antediluvian, which is much more likely, one thing is certain: The authenticity, reliability, and usefulness of the Books of Hermes — or rather of what remains of the thirty‐six works attributed to the Egyptian magician — are fully recognized by Champollion, junior, and corroborated by Champollion‐Figeac, who mentions it. Now, if by carefully looking over the kabalistical works, which are all derived from that universal storehouse of esoteric knowledge, we find the fac‐similes of many so‐called miracles wrought by magical art, equally reproduced by the Quiches; and if even in the fragments left of the original Popol‐Vuh, there is sufficient evidence that the religious customs of the Mexicans, Peruvians, and other American races are nearly identical with those of the ancient Phœnicians, Babylonians, and Egyptians; and if, moreover, we discover that many of their religious terms have etymologically the same origin; how are we to

avoid believing that they are the descendants of those whose forefathers ʺfled before the brigand, Joshua, the son of Nun?ʺ ʺNuñez de la Vega says that Nin, or Imos, of the Tzendales, was the Ninus of the Babylonians.ʺ*

It is possible that, so far, it may be a coincidence; as the identification of one with the other rests but upon a poor argument. ʺBut it is known,ʺ adds de Bourbourg, ʺthat this prince, and according to others, his father, Bel, or Baal, received, like the Nin of the Tzendales the homages of his subjects under the shape of a serpent.ʺ The latter assertion, besides being fantastic, is nowhere corroborated in the Babylonian records. It is very true that the Phœnicians represented the sun under the image of a dragon; but so did all the other people who symbolized their sun‐gods. Belus, the first king of the Assyrian dynasty was, according to Castor, and Eusebius who quotes him, deified, i.e., he was ranked among the gods ʺafter his deathʺ only. Thus, neither himself nor his son, Ninus, or Nin, could have received their subjects under the shape of a serpent, whatever the Tzendales did. Bel, according to Christians, is Baal; and Baal is the Devil, since the Bible prophets began so designating every deity of their neighbors; therefore Belus, Ninus, and the Mexican Nin are serpents and devils; and, as the Devil, or father of evil, is one under many forms, therefore, under whatever name the serpent appears, it is the Devil. Strange logic! Why not say that Ninus the Assyrian, represented as husband and victim

* Brasseur de Bourbourg, ʺCartas,ʺ p. 52.

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of the ambitious Semiramis, was high priest as well as king of his country? That as such he wore on his tiara the sacred emblems of the dragon and the sun? Moreover, as the priest generally assumed the name of his god, Ninus was said to receive his subject as the representative of this serpent‐god. The idea is preëminently Roman Catholic and amounts to very little, as all their inventions do. If Nuñez de la Vega was so anxious to establish an affiliation between the Mexicans and the biblical sun‐ and serpent‐worshippers, why did he not show another and a better similarity between them without tracing in the Ninevites and the Tzendales the hoof and horn of the Christian Devil?

And to begin with, he might have pointed to the Chronicles of Fuentes, of the kingdom of Guatemala, and to the Manuscript of Don Juan Torres, the grandson of the last king of the Quiches. This document, which is said to have been in the possession of the lieutenant‐general appointed by Pedro de Alvarado, states that the Toltecas themselves descended from the house of Israel, who were released by Moses, and who, after crossing the Red Sea, fell into idolatry. After that, having separated themselves from their companions, and under the guidance of a chief named Tanub, they set out wandering, and from one continent to another they came to a place named the Seven Caverns, in the Kingdom of Mexico, where they founded the famous town of Tula, etc.*

* See Stephens, ʺTravels in Central America,ʺ etc.

If this statement has never obtained more credit than it has, it is simply due to the fact that it passed through the hands of Father Francis Vasques, historian of the Order of San Francis, and this circumstance, to use the expression employed by des Mousseaux in connection with the work of the poor, unfrocked Abbé Huc, ʺis not calculated to strengthen our confidence.ʺ But there is another point as important, if not more so, as it seems to have escaped falsification by the zealous Catholic padres, and rests chiefly on Indian tradition. A famous Toltecan king, whose name is mixed up in the weird legends of Utatlan, the ruined capital of the great Indian kingdom, bore the biblical appellation of Balam Acan; the first name being preëminently Chaldean, and reminding one immediately of Balaam and his human‐ voiced ass. Besides the statement of Lord Kingsborough, who found such a striking similarity between the language of the Aztecs (the mother tongue) and the Hebrew, many of the figures on the bas‐reliefs of Palenque and idols in terra cotta, exhumed in Santa Cruz del Quiche, have on their heads bandelets with a square protuberance on them, in front of the forehead, very similar to the phylacteries worn by the Hebrew Pharisees of old, while at prayers, and even by devotees of the present day, particularly the Jews of Poland and Russia. But as this may be but a fancy of ours, after all, we will not insist on the details.

Upon the testimony of the ancients, corroborated by modern discoveries, we know that there were numerous catacombs in Egypt and Chaldea, some of them of a very vast

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extent. The most renowned of them were the subterranean crypts of Thebes and Memphis. The former, beginning on the western side of the Nile, extended toward the Libyan desert, and were known as the Serpentʹs catacombs, or passages. It was there that were performed the sacred mysteries of the kúklos ànágkés, the ʺUnavoidable Cycle,ʺ more generally known as the ʺcircle of necessityʺ; the inexorable doom imposed upon every soul after the bodily death, and when it had been judged in the Amenthian region.

In de Bourbourgʹs book, Votan, the Mexican demi‐god, in narrating his expedition, describes a subterranean passage, which ran underground, and terminated at the root of the heavens, adding that this passage was a snakeʹs hole, ʺun agujero de culebraʺ; and that he was admitted to it because he was himself ʺa son of the snakes,ʺ or a serpent.*

This is, indeed, very suggestive; for his description of the snakeʹs hole is that of the ancient Egyptian crypt, as above mentioned. The hierophants, moreover, of Egypt, as of Babylon, generally styled themselves the ʺSons of the Serpent‐god,ʺ or ʺSons of the Dragonʺ; not because — as des Mousseaux would have his readers believe — they were the progeny of Satan‐incubus, the old serpent of Eden, but because, in the Mysteries, the serpent was the symbol of WISDOM and immortality.

* ʺCartas,ʺ 53, 7‐62.

ʺThe Assyrian priest bore always the name of his god,ʺ says Movers.† The Druids of the Celto‐Britannic regions also called themselves snakes. ʺI am a Serpent, I am a Druid!ʺ they exclaimed. The Egyptian Karnak is twin‐brother to the Carnac of Bretagné, the latter Carnac meaning the serpentʹs mount. The Dracontia once covered the surface of the globe, and these temples were sacred to the dragon, only because it was the symbol of the sun, which, in its turn, was the symbol of the highest god — the Phœnician Elon or Elion, whom Abraham recognized as El Elion.‡ Besides the surname of serpents, they were called the ʺbuilders,ʺ the ʺarchitectsʺ; for the immense grandeur of their temples and monuments was such, that even now the pulverized remains of them ʺfrighten the mathematical calculations of our modern engineers,ʺ says Taliesin.§

De Bourbourg hints that the chiefs of the name of Votan, the Quetzo‐Cohuatl, or serpent deity of the Mexicans, are the descendants of Ham and Canaan. ʺI am Hivim,ʺ they say. ʺBeing a Hivim, I am of the great race of the Dragon (snake). I am a snake myself, for I am a Hivim.ʺ** And des Mousseaux, rejoicing because he believes himself fairly on the serpentʹs, or rather, devilʹs trail, hurries to explain: ʺAccording to the most learned commentators of our sacred books, the Chivim

or Hivim, or Hevites, descend from Heth, son of Canaan, son of Ham . . . the accursed!ʺ*

But modern research has demonstrated, on unimpeachable evidence, that the whole genealogical table of the tenth chapter of Genesis refers to imaginary heroes, and that the closing verses of the ninth are little better than a bit of Chaldean allegory of Sisuthrus and the mythical flood, compiled and arranged to fit the Noachian frame. But, suppose the descendants of these Canaanites, ʺthe accursed,ʺ were to resent for once the unmerited outrage? It would be an easy matter for them to reverse the tables, and answer to this fling, based on a fable, by a fact proved by archæologists and symbologists — namely, that Seth, Adamʹs third son, and the forefather of all Israel, the ancestor of Noah, and the progenitor of the ʺchosen people,ʺ is but Hermes, the god of wisdom, called also Thoth, Tat, Seth, Set, and Sat‐an; and that he was, furthermore, when viewed under his bad aspect, Typhon, the Egyptian Satan, who was also Set. For the Jewish people, whose well‐educated men, no more than Philo, or Josephus, the historian, regard their Mosaic books as otherwise than an allegory, such a discovery amounts to but little. But for Christians, who, like des Mousseaux, very unwisely accept the Bible narratives as literal history, the case stands very different.

* ʺHauts Phénomenes de la Magie,ʺ 50.

MOSES A PRIEST OF OSIRIS

As far as affiliation goes, we agree with this pious writer; and we feel every day as certain that some of the peoples of Central America will be traced back to the Phœnicians and the Mosaic Israelites, as we do that the latter will be proved to have as persistently stuck to the same idolatry — if idolatry there is — of the sun and serpent‐worship, as the Mexicans. There is evidence — biblical evidence — that two of Jacobʹs sons, Levi and Dan, as well as Judah, married Canaanite women, and followed the worship of their wives. Of course, every Christian will protest, but the proof may be found even in the translated Bible, pruned as it now stands. The dying Jacob thus describes his sons: ʺDan,ʺ says he, ʺshall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse‐ heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. . . . I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!ʺ Of Simeon and Levi, the patriarch (or Israel) remarks that they ʺ. . . are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly.ʺ† Now, in the original, the words ʺtheir secret,ʺ read — their SOD.‡ And Sod was the

† Genesis xlix.

‡ Dunlap, in his introduction to ʺSOD, the Mysteries of Adonis,ʺ explains the word ʺSod,ʺ as Arcanum; religious mystery on the authority of Shindlerʹs ʺPenteglottʺ (1201). ʺThe SECRET of the Lord is with them that fear Him,ʺ says Psalm xxv, 14. This is a mistranslation of the Christians, for it ought to read ʺSod Ihoh (the mysteries of Iohoh) are for those who fear Himʺ (Dunlap, ʺMysteries of Adonis,ʺ xi.). ʺAl (El) is terrible

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name for the great Mysteries of Baal, Adonis, and Bacchus who were all sun‐gods and had serpents for symbols. The kabalists explain the allegory of the fiery serpents by saying, that this was the name given to the tribe of Levi, to all the Levites in short, and that Moses was the chief of the Sodales*. And here is the moment to prove our statements.

Moses is mentioned by several old historians as an Egyptian priest; Manetho says he was a hierophant of Hieropolis, and a priest of the sun‐god Osiris, and that his name was Osarsiph. Those moderns, who accept it as a fact that he ʺwas learned in all the wisdomʺ of the Egyptians, must also submit to the right interpretation of the word wisdom, which was throughout the world known as a synonym of initiation into the secret mysteries of the Magi. Did the idea never strike the reader of the Bible, that an alien born and brought up in a foreign country could not and would not possibly have been admitted — we will not say to the final initiation, the grandest mystery of all, but even to share the knowledge of the minor priesthood, those who belonged to the lesser mysteries? In Genesis xliii. 32, we read, that no Egyptian could seat himself to eat bread with the brothers of Joseph, ʺfor that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.ʺ But

in the great Sod of the Kedeshim (the priests, the holy, the Initiated), Psalm lxxxix. 7ʺ (Ibid.).

* ʺThe members of the priest‐colleges were called Sodales,ʺ says Freundʹs ʺLatin Lexiconʺ (iv. 448). ʺSODALITIES were constituted in the Idæan Mysteries of the MIGHTY MOTHER,ʺ writes Cicero (ʺDe Senectute,ʺ 13); Dunlap, ʺMysteries of Adonis.ʺ

that the Egyptians ate ʺwith him (Joseph) by themselves.ʺ The above proves two things: 1, that Joseph, whatever he was in his heart, had, in appearance at least, changed his religion, married the daughter of a priest of the ʺidolatrousʺ nation, and become himself an Egyptian; otherwise, the natives would not have eaten bread with him. And 2, that subsequently Moses, if not an Egyptian by birth, became one through being admitted into the priesthood, and thus was a SODALE. As an induction, the narrative of the ʺbrazen serpentʺ (the Caduceus of Mercury or Asclepios, the son of the sun‐god Apollo‐Python) becomes logical and natural. We must bear in mind that Pharaohʹs daughter, who saved Moses and adopted him, is called by Josephus Thermuthis; and the latter, according to W lkinson, is the name of the asp sacred to Isis;† moreover, Moses is said to descend from the tribe of Levi. We will explain the kabalistic ideas as to the books of Moses and the great prophet himself more fully in Volume II.

If Brasseur de Bourbourg and the Chevalier des Mousseaux, had so much at heart to trace the identity of the Mexicans with the Canaanites, they might have found far better and weightier proofs than by showing both the ʺaccursedʺ descendants of Ham. For instance, they might have pointed to the Nargal, the Chaldean and Assyrian chief of the Magi (Rab‐Mag) and the Nagal, the chief sorcerer of the Mexican Indians. Both derive their names from Nergal‐ Sarezer, the Assyrian god, and both have the same faculties,

† See Wilkinson, ʺAncient Egyptians,ʺ vol. v., p. 65.

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or powers to have an attendant dæmon with whom they identify themselves completely. The Chaldean and Assyrian Nargal kept his dæmon, in the shape of some animal considered sacred, inside the temple; the Indian Nagal keeps his wherever he can — in the neighboring lake, or wood, or in the house, under the shape of a house‐hold animal.*

We find the Catholic World, newspaper, in a recent number, bitterly complaining that the old Pagan element of the aboriginal inhabitants of America does not seem to be utterly dead in the United States. Even where tribes have been for long years under the care of Christian teachers, heathen rites are practiced in secret, and crypto‐paganism, or nagualism, flourishes now, as in the days of Montezuma. It says: ʺNagualism and voodoo‐worshipʺ — as it calls these two strange sects — ʺare direct devil‐worship. A report addressed to the Cortes in 1812, by Don Pedro Baptista Pino, says: ʹAll the pueblos have their artufas — so the natives call subterranean rooms with only a single door, where they assemble to perform their feasts, and hold meetings. These are impenetrable temples . . . and the doors are always closed on the Spaniards.

ʺ ʹAll these pueblos, in spite of the sway which religion has had over them, cannot forget a part of the beliefs which have been transmitted to them, and which they are careful to transmit to their descendants. Hence come the adoration they

* Brasseur de Bourbourg, ʺMexique,ʺ pp. 135‐574.

render the sun and moon, and other heavenly bodies, the respect they entertain for fire, etc.

ʺ ʹThe pueblo chiefs seem to be at the same time priests; they perform various simple rites, by which the power of the sun and of Montezuma is recognized, as well as the power (according to some accounts) of the Great Snake, to whom, by order of Montezuma, they are to look for life. They also officiate in certain ceremonies with which they pray for rain. There are painted representations of the Great Snake, together with that of a misshapen, red‐haired man, declared to stand for Montezuma. Of this last there was also, in the year 1845, in the pueblo of Laguna, a rude effigy or idol, intended, apparently, to represent only the head of the deity.ʹʺ †

The perfect identity of the rites, ceremonies, traditions, and even the names of the deities, among the Mexicans and ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, are a sufficient proof of South America being peopled by a colony which mysteriously found its way across the Atlantic. When? at what period? History is silent on that point; but those who consider that there is no tradition, sanctified by ages, without a certain sediment of truth at the bottom of it, believe in the Atlantis‐legend. There are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of thoughtful and solitary students, who pass their lives in obscurity, far from the rumors of the world, studying

the great problems of the physical and spiritual universes. They have their secret records in which are preserved the fruits of the scholastic labors of the long line of recluses whose successors they are. The knowledge of their early ancestors, the sages of India, Babylonia, Nineveh, and the imperial Thebes; the legends and traditions commented upon by the masters of Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato, in the marble halls of Heliopolis and Saïs; traditions which, in their days, already seemed to hardly glimmer from behind the foggy curtain of the past; — all this, and much more, is recorded on indestructible parchment, and passed with jealous care from one adept to another. These men believe the story of the Atlantis to be no fable, but maintain that at different epochs of the past huge islands, and even continents, existed where now there is but a wild waste of waters. In those submerged temples and libraries the archæologist would find, could he but explore them, the materials for filling all the gaps that now exist in what we imagine is history. They say that at a remote epoch a traveller could traverse what is now the Atlantic Ocean, almost the entire distance by land, crossing in boats from one island to another, where narrow straits then existed.

Our suspicion as to the relationship of the cis‐Atlantic and trans‐Atlantic races is strengthened upon reading about the wonders wrought by Quetzo‐Cohuatl, the Mexican magician. His wand must be closely‐related to the traditional sapphire‐ stick of Moses, the stick which bloomed in the garden of Raguel‐Jethro, his father‐in‐law, and upon which was

engraved the ineffable name. The ʺfour menʺ described as the real four ancestors of the human race, ʺwho were neither begotten by the gods, nor born of woman,ʺ but whose ʺcreation was a wonder wrought by the Creator,ʺ and who were made after three attempts at manufacturing men had failed, equally present some striking points of similarity with the esoteric explanations of the Hermetists;* they also undeniably recall the four sons of God of the Egyptian theogony. Moreover, as any one may infer, the resemblance of this myth to the narrative related in Genesis, will be apparent to even a superficial observer.

These four ancestors ʺcould reason and speak, their sight was unlimited, and they knew all things at once.ʺ† When ʺthey had rendered thanks to their Creator for their existence, the gods were frightened, and they breathed a cloud over the eyes of men that they might see a certain distance only, and not be like the gods themselves.ʺ This bears directly upon the sentence in Genesis, ʺBehold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life,ʺ etc. Then, again, ʺWhile they were asleep God gave them wives,ʺ etc.

We disclaim the least intention to disrespectfully suggest ideas to those who are so wise as to need no hint. But we

* In ʺHesiod,ʺ Zeus creates his third race of men out of ash‐trees. In ʺPopol‐Vuh,ʺ we are told the third race of men is created out of the tree ʺtzite,ʺ and women are made from the marrow of a reed which was called ʺsibac.ʺ This also is a strange coincidence.

† ʺPopol‐Vuh,ʺ reviewed by Max Müller.

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must bear in mind that authentic treatises upon ancient magic of the Chaldean and Egyptian lore are not scattered about in public libraries, and at auction sales. That such exist is nevertheless a fact for many students of the arcane philosophy. Is it not of the greatest importance for every antiquarian to be acquainted at least superficially with their contents? ʺThe four ancestors of the race,ʺ adds Max Müller, ʺseem to have had a long life, and when at last they came to die, they disappeared in a mysterious manner, and left to their sons what is called the hidden majesty, which was never to be opened by human hands. What it was we do not know.ʺ

If there is no relationship between this hidden majesty and the hidden glory of the Chaldean Kabala, which we are told was left behind him by Enoch when he was translated in such a mysterious way, then we must discredit all circumstantial evidence. But is it not barely possible that these ʺfour ancestorsʺ of the Quiche race typify in their esoteric sense the four successive progenitors of men, mentioned in Genesis i., ii., and vi.? In the first chapter, the first man is bi‐sexual — ʺmale and female created he themʺ — and answers to the hermaphrodite deities of the subsequent mythologies; the second, Adam, made out of ʺthe dust of the groundʺ and uni‐ sexual and answering to the ʺsons of Godʺ of chapter vi.; the third, the giants, or nephilim, who are only hinted at in the Bible, but fully explained elsewhere; the fourth, the parents of men ʺwhose daughters were fair.ʺ

Taking the admitted facts that the Mexicans had their magicians from the remote periods; that the same remark

applies to all the ancient religions of the world; that a strong resemblance prevails not only in the forms of their ceremonial worship, but also in the very names used to designate certain magical implements; and finally that all other clews, in accordance with scientific deductions, have failed (some because swallowed up in the bottomless pit of coincidences), why should we not turn to the great authorities upon magic, and see whether, under this ʺaftergrowth of fantastic nonsense,ʺ there may not be a deep substratum of truth? Here we are not willing to be misunderstood. We do not send the scientists to the Kabala and the Hermetic books to study magic, but to the authorities on magic to discover materials for history and science. We have no idea of incurring the wrathful denunciations of the Academicians, by an indiscretion like that of poor des Mousseaux, when he tried to force them to read his demonological Memoire and investigate the Devil.

The History of Bernal Diaz de Castilla, a follower of Cortez, gives us some idea of the extraordinary refinement and intelligence of the people whom they conquered; but the descriptions are too long to be inserted here. Suffice it to say, that the Aztecs appeared in more than one way to have resembled the ancient Egyptians in civilization and refinement. Among both peoples magic or the arcane natural philosophy was cultivated to the highest degree. Add to this that Greece, the ʺlater cradle of the arts and sciences,ʺ and India, cradle of religions, were and are still devoted to its

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study and practice — and who shall venture to discredit its dignity as a study, and its profundity as a science?

There never was, nor can there be more than one universal religion; for there can be but one truth concerning God. Like an immense chain whose upper end, the alpha, remains invisibly emanating from a Deity — in statu abscondito with every primitive theology — it encircles our globe in every direction; it leaves not even the darkest corner unvisited, before the other end, the omega, turns back on its way to be again received where it first emanated. On this divine chain was strung the exoteric symbology of every people. Their variety of form is powerless to affect their substance, and under their diverse ideal types of the universe of matter, symbolizing its vivifying principles, the uncorrupted immaterial image of the spirit of being guiding them is the same.

So far as human intellect can go in the ideal interpretation of the spiritual universe, its laws and powers, the last word was pronounced ages since; and, if the ideas of Plato can be simplified for the sake of easier comprehension, the spirit of their substance can neither be altered, nor removed without material damage to the truth. Let human brains submit themselves to torture for thousands of years to come; let theology perplex faith and mime it with the enforcing of incomprehensible dogmas in metaphysics; and science strengthen skepticism, by pulling down the tottering remains of spiritual intuition in mankind, with her demonstrations of its fallibility, eternal truth can never be destroyed. We find its

last possible expression in our human language in the Persian Logos, the Honover, or the living manifested Word of God.

The Zoroastrian Enoch‐Verihe is identical with the Jewish ʺI amʺ; and the ʺGreat Spiritʺ of the poor, untutored Indian, is the manifested Brahma of the Hindu philosopher. One of the latter, Tcharaka, a Hindu physician, who is said to have lived 5,000 years B.C., in his treatise on the origin of things, called Usa, thus beautifully expresses himself: ʺOur Earth is, like all the luminous bodies that surround us, one of the atoms of the immense Whole of which we show a slight conception by terming it — the Infinite.ʺ

ʺThere is but one light, and there is but one darkness,ʺ says a Siamese proverb. Dæmon est Deus inversus, the Devil is the shadow of God, states the universal kabalistic axiom. Could light exist but for primeval darkness? And did not the brilliant, sunny universe first stretch its infant arms from the swaddling bands of dark and dreary chaos? If the Christian

ʺfulness of Him that filleth all in allʺ is a revelation, then we must admit that, if there is a devil, he must be included in this fulness, and be a part of that which ʺfilleth all in all.ʺ From time immemorial the justification of the Deity, and His separation from the existing evil was attempted, and the object was reached by the old Oriental philosophy in the foundation of the theodiké; but their metaphysical views on the fallen spirit, have never been disfigured by the creation of an anthropomorphic personality of the Devil as was done subsequently by the leading lights of Christian theology. A personal fiend, who opposes the Deity, and impedes progress

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on its way to perfection, is to be sought only on earth amid humanity, not in heaven.

Thus is it that all the religious monuments of old, in whatever land or under whatever climate, are the expression of the same identical thoughts, the key to which is in the esoteric doctrine. It would be vain, without studying the latter, to seek to unriddle the mysteries enshrouded for centuries in the temples and ruins of Egypt and Assyria, or those of Central America, British Columbia, and the Nagkon‐ Wat of Cambodia. If each of these was built by a different nation; and neither nation had had intercourse with the others for ages, it is also certain that all were planned and built under the direct supervision of the priests. And the clergy of every nation, though practicing rites and ceremonies which may have differed externally, had evidently been initiated into the same traditional mysteries which were taught all over the world.

In order to institute a better comparison between the specimens of prehistoric architecture to be found at the most opposite points of the globe, we have but to point to the grandiose Hindu ruins of Ellora in the Dekkan, the Mexican Chichen‐Itza, in Yucatan, and the still grander ruins of Copan, in Guatemala. They present such features of resemblance that it seems impossible to escape the conviction that they were built by peoples moved by the same religious ideas, and that had reached an equal level of highest civilization in arts and sciences.

There is not, perhaps, on the face of the whole globe, a more imposing mass of ruins than Nagkon‐Wat, the wonder and puzzle of European archæologists who venture into Siam. And when we say ruins, the expression is hardly correct; for nowhere are there buildings of such tremendous antiquity to be found in a better state of preservation than Nagkon‐Wat, and the ruins of Angkorthôm, the great temple.

Hidden far away in the province of Siamrap — eastern Siam — in the midst of a most luxuriant tropical vegetation, surrounded by almost impenetrable forests of palms, cocoa‐ trees, and betel‐nut, ʺthe general appearance of the wonderful temple is beautiful and romantic, as well as impressive and grand,ʺ says Mr. Vincent, a recent traveler.* ʺWe whose good fortune it is to live in the nineteenth century, are accustomed to boast of the perfection and preëminence of our modern civilization; of the grandeur of our attainments in science, art, literature, and what not, as compared with those whom we call ancients; but still we are compelled to admit that they have far excelled our recent endeavors in many things, and notably in the fine arts of painting, architecture, and sculpture. We were but just looking upon a most wonderful example of the two latter, for in style and beauty of architecture, solidity of construction, and magnificent and elaborate carving and sculpture, the Great Nagkon‐Wat has no superior, certainly no rival standing at the present day. The first view of the ruins is overwhelming.ʺ

* Frank Vincent, Jun., ʺThe Land of the White Elephant,ʺ p. 209.

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Thus the opinion of another traveller is added to that of many preceding ones, including archæologists and other competent critics, who have believed that the ruins of the past Egyptian splendor deserve no higher eulogium than Nagkon‐ Wat.

According to our plan, we will allow more impartial critics than ourselves to describe the place, since, in a work professedly devoted to a vindication of the ancients, the testimony of so enthusiastic an advocate as the present writer may be questioned. We have, nevertheless, seen Nagkon‐Wat under exceptionally favorable circumstances, and can, therefore, certify to the general correctness of Mr. Vincentʹs description. He says:

ʺWe entered upon an immense causeway, the stairs of which were flanked with six huge griffins, each carved from a single block of stone. The causeway is . . . 725 feet in length, and is paved with stones each of which measures four feet in length by two in breadth. On either side of it are artificial lakes fed by springs, and each covering about five acres of ground. . . . The outer wall of Nagkon‐Wat (the city of monasteries) is half a mile square, with gateways . . . which are handsomely carved with figures of gods and dragons. The foundations are ten feet in height. . . . The entire edifice, including the roof, is of stone, but without cement, and so closely fitting are the joints as even now to be scarcely discernible. . . . The shape of the building is oblong, being 796 feet in length, and 588 in width, while the highest central pagoda rises some 250

odd feet above the ground, and four others, at the angles of the court, are each about 150 feet in height.ʺ

The above underscored lines are suggestive to travellers who have remarked and admired the same wonderful mason‐work in the Egyptian remains. If the same workmen did not lay the courses in both countries we must at least think that the secret of this matchless wall‐building was equally known to the architects of every land.

THE LESSONS TAUGHT BY THE RUINS OF SIAM

ʺPassing, we ascend a platform . . . and enter the temple itself through a columned portico, the facade of which is beautifully carved in basso‐relievo with ancient mythological subjects. From this doorway, on either side, runs a corridor with a double row of columns, cut — base and capital — from single blocks, with a double, oval‐shaped roof, covered with carving and consecutive sculptures upon the outer wall. This gallery of sculptures, which forms the exterior of the temple, consists of over half a mile of continuous pictures, cut in basso‐relievo upon sandstone slabs six feet in width, and represents subjects taken from Hindu mythology, from the Ramayâna — the Sanscrit epic poem of India, with its 25,000 verses describing the exploits of the god Rama, and the son of the King of Oudh. The contests of the King of Ceylon, and Hanouma,* the monkey‐god, are graphically represented.

* The Hanoumā is over three feet tall, and black as a coal. The Ramayana, giving the biography of this sacred monkey, relates that Hanoumā was

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There is no keystone used in the arch of this corridor. On the walls are sculptured the immense number of 100,000 separate figures. One picture from the Ramayana . . . occupies 240 feet of the wall. . . . In the Nagkon‐Wat as many as 1,532 solid columns have been counted, and among the entire ruins of Angkor . . . the immense number of 6,000, almost all of them hewn from single blocks and artistically carved. . . .

ʺBut who built Nagkon‐Wat? and when was it built? Learned men have attempted to form opinions from studies of its construction, and especially ornamentation,ʺ and have

formerly a powerful chieftain, who being the greatest friend of Rama, helped him to find his wife, Sitha, who had been carried off to Ceylon by Ravana, the mighty king of the giants. After numerous adventures Hanoumā was caught by the latter, while visiting the city of the giant as Ramaʹs spy. For this crime Ravana had the poor Hanoumāʹs tail oiled and set on fire, and it was in extinguishing it that the monkey‐god became so black in the face that neither himself nor his posterity could ever get rid of the color. If we have to believe Hindu legends this same Hanoumā was the progenitor of the Europeans; a tradition which, though strictly Darwinian, hence, scientific, is by no means flattering to us. The legend states that for services rendered, Rama, the hero and demi‐god, gave in marriage to the monkey‐warriors of his army the daughters of the giants of Ceylon — the Bâkshasas — and granted them, moreover, as a dowry, all western parts of the world. Repairing thence, the monkeys and their giant‐wives lived happily and had a number of descendants. The latter are the present Europeans. Dravidian words are found in Western Europe, indicating that there was an original unity of race and language between the populations. May it not be a hint that the traditions are akin, of elfin and kobold races in Europe, and monkeys, actually cognate with them in Hindustan?

failed. ʺNative Cambodian historians,ʺ adds Vincent, ʺreckon 2,400 from the building of the temple. . . . I asked one of them how long Nagkon‐Wat had been built. . . . ʹNone can tell when.

. . . I do not know; it must have either sprung up from the ground or been built by giants, or perhaps by the angelsʹ . . .
was the answer.ʺ

When Stephens asked the native Indians ʺWho built Copan? . . . what nation traced the hieroglyphic designs, sculptured these elegant figures and carvings, these emblematical designs?ʺ the dull answer he received was ʺQuien sabe?ʺ — who knows! ʺAll is mystery; dark, impenetrable mystery,ʺ writes Stephens. ʺIn Egypt, the colossal skeletons of gigantic temples stand in all the nakedness of desolation. Here, an immense forest shrouded the ruins, hiding them from sight.ʺ*

But there are perhaps many circumstances, trifling for archæologists unacquainted with the ʺidle and fancifulʺ legends of old, hence overlooked; otherwise the discovery might have sent them on a new train of thought. One is the invariable presence in the Egyptian, Mexican, and Siamese ruined temples, of the monkey. The Egyptian cynocephalus assumes the same postures as the Hindu and Siamese Hanoumā; and among the sculptured fragments of Copan, Stephens found the remains of colossal apes or baboons, ʺstrongly resembling in outline and appearance the four monstrous animals which once stood in front, attached to the

* ʺIncidents of Travels in Central America, etc.,ʺ vol. i., p. 105.

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base of the obelisk of Luxor, now in Paris,* and which, under the name of the cynocephali, were worshipped at Thebes.ʺ In almost every Buddhist temple there are idols of huge monkeys kept, and some people have in their houses white monkeys on purpose ʺto keep bad spirits away.ʺ

ʺWas civilization,ʺ writes Louis de Carné,† ʺin the complex meaning we give that word, in keeping among the ancient Cambodians with what such prodigies of architecture seem to indicate? The age of Pheidias was that of Sophocles, Socrates, and Plato; Michael Angelo and Raphael succeeded Dante. There are luminous epochs during which the human mind, developing itself in every direction, triumphs in all, and creates masterpieces which spring from the same inspiration.ʺ

ʺNagkon‐Wat,ʺ concludes Vincent, ʺmust be ascribed to other than ancient Cambodians. But to whom? . . . There exist no credible traditions; all is absurd fable or legend.ʺ

The latter sentence has become of late a sort of cant phrase in the mouths of travellers and archæologists. When they have found that no clew is attainable unless it can be found in popular legends, they turn away discouraged, and a final verdict is withheld. At the same time Vincent quotes a writer who remarks that these ruins ʺare as imposing as the ruins of Thebes, or Memphis, but more mysterious.ʺ Mouhot thinks they were erected ʺby some ancient Michael Angelo,ʺ and adds that Nagkon‐Wat ʺis grander than anything left to us by

* They stand no more, for the obelisk alone was removed to Paris.

† See ʺThe Land of the White Elephant,ʺ p. 221.

Greece or Rome.ʺ Furthermore Mouhot ascribes the building again to some of the lost tribes of Israel, and is corroborated in that opinion by Miche, the French Bishop of Cambodia, who confesses that he is struck ʺby the Hebrew character of the faces of many of the savage Stiens.ʺ Henri Mouhot believes that, ʺwithout exaggeration, the oldest parts of Angkor may be fixed at more than 2,000 years ago.ʺ This, then, in comparison with the pyramids, would make them quite modern; the date is the more incredible, because the pictures on the walls may be proved to belong to those archaic ages when Poseidon and the Kabeiri were worshipped throughout the continent. Had Nagkon‐Wat been built, as Dr. Adolf Bastian‡ will have it, ʺfor the reception of the learned patriarch, Buddhagosa, who brought the holy books of the Trai‐Pidok from Ceylon; or, as Bishop Pallegoix, who ʺrefers the erection of this edifice to the reign of Phra Pathum Suriving,ʺ when ʺthe sacred books of the Buddhists were brought from Ceylon, and Buddhism became the religion of the Cambodians,ʺ how is it possible to account for the following?

ʺWe see in this same temple carved images of Buddha, four, and even thirty‐two‐armed, and two and sixteen‐headed gods, the Indian Vishnu, gods with wings, Burmese heads, Hindu figures, and Ceylon mythology. . . . You see warriors riding upon elephants and in chariots, foot soldiers with shield and spear, boats, tigers, griffins . . . serpents, fishes,

‡ The President of the Royal Geographical Society of Berlin.

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crocodiles, bullocks . . . soldiers of immense physical development, with helmets, and some people with beards — probably Moors. The figures,ʺ adds Mr. Vincent, ʺstand somewhat like those on the great Egyptian monuments, the side partly turned toward the front . . . and I noticed, besides, five horsemen, armed with spear and sword, riding abreast, like those seen upon the Assyrian tablets in the British Museum.ʺ*

For our part, we may add, that there are on the walls several repetitions of Dagon, the man‐fish of the Babylonians, and of the Kabeirian gods of Samothrace. This may have escaped the notice of the few archæologists who examined the place; but upon stricter inspection they will be found there, as well as the reputed father of the Kabeiri — Vulcan, with his bolts and implements, having near him a king with a sceptre in his hand, which is the counterpart of that of Cheronaæ, or the ʺsceptre of Agamemnon,ʺ so‐called, said to have been presented to him by the lame god of Lemnos. In another place we find Vulcan, recognizable by his hammer and pincers, but under the shape of a monkey, as usually represented by the Egyptians.

Now, if Nagkon‐Wat is essentially a Buddhist temple, how comes it to have on its walls basso‐relievos of completely an Assyrian character; and Kabeirian gods which, though universally worshipped as the most ancient of the Asiatic mystery‐gods, had already been abandoned 200 years B.C.,

* ʺThe Land of the White Elephant,ʺ p. 215.

and the Samothracian mysteries themselves completely altered? Whence the popular tradition concerning the Prince of Roma among the Cambodians, a personage mentioned by all the native historians, who attribute to him the foundation of the temple? Is it not barely possible that even the Ramayâna, itself, the famous epic poem, is but the original of Homerʹs Iliad, as it was suggested some years ago? The beautiful Paris, carrying off Helen, looks very much like Râvana, king of the giants, eloping with Sita, Ramaʹs wife? The Trojan war is a counterpart of the Ramayâna war; moreover, Herodotus assures us that the Trojan heroes and gods date in Greece only from the days of the Iliad. In such a case even Hanoumā, the monkey‐god, would be but Vulcan in disguise; the more so that the Cambodian tradition makes the founder of Angkor come from Roma, which they place at the western end of the world, and that the Hindu Roma also apportions the west to the descendants of Hanoumā.

Hypothetical as the suggestion may now seem, it is worthy of consideration, if even for the sake of being refuted. The Abbé Jaquenet, a Catholic missionary in Cochin China, ever ready to connect the least glimmer of historical light with that of Christian revelation, writes, ʺWhether we consider the commercial relations of the Jews . . . when, in the height of their power, the combined fleets of Hiram and Solomon went to seek the treasures of Ophir, or whether we come lower down, to the dispersion of the ten tribes who, instead of returning from captivity, set out from the banks of the Euphrates, and reached the shores of the ocean . . . the

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shining of the light of revelation in the far East is not the less incontestable.ʺ

It looks certainly ʺincontestableʺ enough if we reverse the position and admit that all the light that ever shone on the Israelites came to them from this ʺfar East,ʺ passing first through the Chaldeans and Egyptians. The first thing to settle, is to find out who were the Israelites themselves; and that is the most vital question. Many historians seem to claim, with good reason, that the Jews were similar or identical with the ancient Phœnicians, but the Phœnicians were beyond any doubt an Æthiopian race; moreover, the present race of Punjaub are hybridized with the Asiatic Æthiopians. Herodotus traces the Hebrews to the Persian Gulf; and south of that place were the Himyarites (the Arabians); beyond, the early Chaldeans and Susinians, the great builders. This seems to establish pretty well their Æthiopian affinity. Megasthenes says that the Jews were an Indian sect called Kalani, and their theology resembled that of the Indians. Other authors also suspect that the colonized Jews or the Judeans were the Yadus from Afghanistan — the old India.* Eusebius tells us that ʺthe Æthiopians came from the river Indus and settled near Egypt.ʺ More research may show that the Tamil Hindus, who are accused by the missionaries of worshipping the

* The Phœnician Dido is the feminine of David רןד, ןךיד. Under the name of Astarte, she led the Phœnician colonies, and her image was on the prow of their ships. But David and Saul are names belonging to Afghanistan also.

Devil — Kutti‐Sattan — only honor, after all, Seth or Satan, worshipped by the biblical Hittites.

But if the Jews were in the twilight of history the Phœnicians, the latter may be traced themselves to the nations who used the old Sanscrit language. Carthage was a Phœnician city, hence its name; for Tyre was equally Kartha. In the Bible the words Kir, Kirjath are frequently found. Their tutelar god was styled Mel‐Kartha (Mel, Baal), or tutelar lord of the city. In Sanscrit a city or communal was a cul and its lord was Heri.† Her‐culeus is therefore the translation of Melkarth and Sanscrit in origin. Moreover all the Cyclopean races were Phœnicians. In the Odyssey the Kuklopes (Cyclops) are the Libyan shepherds; and Herodotus describes them as miners and great builders. They are the ancient Titans or giants, who in Hesiod forge bolts for Zeus. They are the biblical Zamzummim from the land of the giants, the Anakim.

Now it is easy to see that the excavators of Ellora, the builders of the old Pagodas, the architects of Copan and of the ruins of Central America, those of Nagkon‐Wat, and those of the Egyptian remains were, if not of the same race, at least of the same religion — the one taught in the oldest Mysteries. Besides, the figures on the walls of Angkor are purely archaic, and have nothing to do with the images and idols of Buddha,

† (Prof. A. Wilder.) This archæologist says: ʺI regard the Æthiopian, Cushite and Hamitic races as the building and artistic race who worshipped Baal (Siva), or Bel — made temples, grottos, pyramids, and used a language of peculiar type. Rawlinson derives that language from the Turanians in Hindustan.ʺ

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who may be of a far later origin. ʺWhat gives a peculiar interest to this section,ʺ says Dr. Bastian, ʺis the fact that the artist has represented the different nationalities in all their distinctive characteristic features, from the flat‐nosed savage in the tasselled garb of the Pnom and the short‐haired Lao, to the straight‐nosed Rajaput, with sword and shield, and the bearded Moor, giving a catalogue of nationalities, like another column of Trajan, in the predominant physical conformation of each race. On the whole, there is such a prevalence of Hellenic cast in features and profiles, as well as in the elegant attitude of the horsemen, that one might suppose Xenocrates of old, after finishing his labors in Bombay, had made an excursion to the East.ʺ

Therefore, if we allow the tribes of Israel to have had a hand in the building of Nagkon‐Wat, it cannot be as the tribes numbered and sent from the wilderness of Paran in search of the land of Canaan, but as their earlier ancestors, which amounts to the rejection of such tribes, as the casting of a reflection of the Mosaic revelation. And where is the outside historical evidence that such tribes were ever heard of at all, before the compilation of the Old Testament by Ezra? There are archæologists who strongly regard the twelve tribes as utterly mythical,* for there never was a tribe of Simeon, and that of Levi was a caste. There still remains the same problem to solve — whether the Judæans had ever been in Palestine before Cyrus. From the sons of Jacob, who had all married

* Prof. A. Wilder among others.

Canaanites, except Joseph, whose wife was the daughter of an Egyptian Priest of the Sun, down to the legendary Book of Judges there was an acknowledged general intermarrying between the said tribes and the idolatrous races: ʺAnd the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites; and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods,ʺ says the third chapter of Judges, ʺ . . . and the children of Israel forgat their God and served Baalim, and the groves.ʺ This Baal was Moloch, Mʹlch Karta, or Hercules. He was worshipped wherever the Phœnicians went. How could the Israelites possibly keep together as tribes, while, on the authority of the Bible itself, whole populations were from year to year uprooted violently by Assyrian and other conquerors? ʺSo was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day. And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israelʺ (2 Kings, xvii. 23, 24).

If the language of Palestine became in time Semitic, it is because of Assyrian influence; for Phœnicia had become a dependency as early as the days of Hiram, and the Phœnicians evidently changed their language from Hamitic to Semitic. Assyria was ʺthe land of Nimrodʺ (from Nimr, spotted), and Nimrod was Bacchus, with his spotted leopard‐ skin. This leopard‐skin is a sacred appendage of the ʺMysteriesʺ; it was used in the Eleusinian as well as in the

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Egyptian Mysteries; it is found sculptured on the basso‐relievos of Central American ruins, covering the backs of the sacrificers; it is mentioned in the earliest speculations of the Brahmans on the meaning of their sacrificial prayers, the

Aytareya Brahmanam.* It is used in the Agnishtoma, the initiation rites of the Soma Mystery. When the neophyte is ʺto be born again,ʺ he is covered with a leopard‐skin, out of which he emerges as from his motherʹs womb. The Kabeiri were also Assyrian gods. They had different names; in the common language they were known as Jupiter and Bacchus, and sometimes as Achiochersus, Aschieros, Achiochersa, and Cadmillus; and even the true number of these deities was uncertain with the people. They had other names in the ʺsacred language,ʺ known but to the hierophants and priests; and ʺit was not lawful to mention them.ʺ How is it then that we find them reproduced in their Samothracian ʺposturesʺ on the walls of Nagkon‐Wat? How is it again that we find them pronounced — albeit slightly disfigured — as known in that same sacred language, by the populations of Siam, Thibet, and India?

The name Kabeiri may be a derivation from דבא, Abir, great; דבה, Ebir, an astrologer, or דבח, Chabir, an associate; and they were worshipped at Hebron, the city of the Anakes — the giants. The name Abraham, according to Dr. Wilder, has ʺa very Kabeirian look.ʺ The word Heber, or Gheber may be the etymological root of the Hebrews, as applied to Nimrod and

* See Martin Haugʹs translation, ʺThe Aytareya Brahmanam.ʺ

the Bible‐giants of the sixth chapter of Genesis, but we must seek for their origin far earlier than the days of Moses. The name Phœnician affords its own proof. They are called Foinikeʺ by Manetho, or Phʹ Anakes, which shows that the Anakes or Anakim of Canaan, with whom the people of Israel, if not identical in race, had, by intermarriage, become entirely absorbed, were the Phœnicians, or the problematical Hyk‐sos, as Manetho has it, and whom Josephus once declared were the direct ancestors of the Israelites. Therefore, it is in this jumble of contradictory opinions, authorities, and historical olla podrida that we must look for a solution of the mystery. So long as the origin of the Hyk‐sos is not positively settled we can know nothing certain of the Israelitish people who, either wittingly or otherwise, have mixed up their chronology and origin in such an inextricable tangle. But if the Hyk‐sos can be proved to have been the Pali‐Shepherds of the Indus, who partially removed to the East, and came over from the nomadic Aryan tribes of India, then, perhaps, it would account for the biblical myths being so mixed up with the Aryan and Asiatic Mystery‐gods. As Dunlap says: ʺThe Hebrews came out of Egypt among the Canaanites; they need not be traced beyond the Exodus. That is their historical beginning. It was very easy to cover up this remote event by the recital of mythical traditions, and to prefix to it an account of their origin in which the gods (patriarchs) should figure as their ancestors.ʺ But it is not their historical beginning which is the most vital question for the world of science and theology. It is their religious beginning. And if we can trace it through

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the Hyk‐sos — Phœnicians, theÆthiopian builders and the Chaldeans — whether it is to the Hindus that the latter owe their learning, or the Brahmans who owe it to the Chaldeans, we have the means in hand to trace every so‐called revealed dogmatical assertion in the Bible to its origin, which we have to search for in the twilight of history, and before the separation of the Aryan and Semitic families. And how can we do it better or more surely than through means afforded us by archæology? Picture‐writing can be destroyed, but if it survives it cannot lie; and, if we find the same myths, ideas, and secret symbols on monuments all over the world; and if, moreover, these monuments can be shown to antedate the twelve ʺchosenʺ tribes, then we can unerringly show that instead of being a direct divine revelation, it was but an incomplete recollection or tradition among a tribe which had been identified and mixed up for centuries before the apparition of Abraham, with all the three great world‐ families; namely, the Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian nations, if so they must be called.

The Teraphim of Abramʹs father, Terah, the ʺmaker of images,ʺ were the Kabeiri gods, and we see them worshipped by Micah, by the Danites, and others.* Teraphim were identical with the seraphim, and these were serpent‐images, the origin of which is in the Sanscrit sarpâ (the serpent), a symbol sacred to all the deities as a symbol of immortality. Kiyun, or the god Kivan, worshipped by the Hebrews in the

* Judges xvii‐xviii., etc.

wilderness, is Siva, the Hindu,† as well as Saturn.‡ The Greek story shows that Dardanus, the Arcadian, having received them as a dowry, carried them to Samothrace, and from thence to Troy; and they were worshipped far before the days of glory of Tyre or Sidon, though the former had been built 2760 B.C. From where did Dardanus derive them?

It is an easy matter to assign an age to ruins on merely the external evidence of probabilities; it is more difficult to prove it. Meanwhile the rock‐works of Ruad, Perytus, Marathos, resemble those of Petra, Baalbek, and other Æthiopian works, even externally. On the other hand the assertions of certain archæologists who find no resemblance between the temples of Central America and those of Egypt and Siam, leave the symbologist, acquainted with the secret language of picture‐ writing, perfectly unconcerned. He sees the landmarks of one and the same doctrine on all of these monuments, and reads their history and affiliation in signs imperceptible to the uninitiated scientist. There are traditions also; and one of these speaks of the last of the king‐initiates — (who were but rarely admitted to the higher orders of the Eastern Brotherhoods), who reigned in 1670. This king of Siam was the one so ridiculed by the French ambassador, de la Loubere,

† The Zendic H is S in India. Thus Hapta is Sapta; Hindu is Sindhaya. (A. Wilder.) ʺ . . . the S continually softens to H from Greece to Calcutta, from the Caucasus to Egypt,ʺ says Dunlap. Therefore the letters K, H, and S are interchangeable.

‡ Guignant, ʺOp. cit.,ʺ vol. i., p. 167.

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as a lunatic who had been searching all his life for the philosopherʹs stone.

One of such mysterious landmarks is found in the peculiar structure of certain arches in the temples. The author of the Land of the White Elephant remarks as curious, ʺthe absence of the keystone in the arches of the building, and the undecipherable inscriptions.ʺ In the ruins of Santa Cruz del Quiche an arched corridor was found by Stephens, equally without a keystone. Describing the desolate ruins of Palenque, and remarking that the arches of the corridors were all built on this model, and the ceilings in this form, he supposes that ʺthe builders were evidently ignorant of the principles of the arch, and the support was made by stones lapping over as they rose; as at Ocosingo, and among Cyclopean remains in Greece and Italy.ʺ* In other buildings, though they belong to the same group, the traveller found the missing keystone, which is a sufficient proof that its omission elsewhere was premeditated.

May we not look for the solution of the mystery in the Masonic manual? The keystone has an esoteric meaning which ought to be, if it is not, well appreciated by high Masons. The most important subterranean building mentioned in the description of the origin of Freemasonry, is the one built by Enoch. The patriarch is led by the Deity, whom he sees in a vision, into the nine vaults. After that, with the assistance of his son, Methuselah, he constructs in the

* ʺIncidents of Travel in Central America, etc.ʺ

land of Canaan, ʺin the bowels of the mountain,ʺ nine apartments on the models that were shown to him in the vision. Each was roofed with an arch, and the apex of each formed a keystone, having inscribed on it the mirific characters. Each of the latter, furthermore, represented one of the nine names, traced in characters emblematical of the attributes by which the Deity was, according to ancient Freemasonry, known to the antediluvian brethren. Then Enoch constructed two deltas of the purest gold, and tracing two of the mysterious characters on each, he placed one of them in the deepest arch, and he other entrusted to Methuselah, communicating to him, at the same time, other important secrets now lost to Freemasonry.

And so, among these arcane secrets, now lost to their modern successors, may be found also the fact that the keystones were used in the arches only in certain portions of the temples devoted to special purposes. Another similarity presented by the architectural remains of the religious monuments of every country can be found in the identity of parts, courses, and measurements. All these buildings belong to the age of Hermes Trismegistus, and however comparatively modern or ancient the temple may seem, their mathematical proportions are found to correspond with the Egyptian religious edifices. There is a similar disposition of court‐yards, adyta, passages, and steps; hence, despite any dissimilarity in architectural style, it is a warrantable inference that like religious rites were celebrated in all. Says Dr. Stukely, concerning Stonehenge: ʺThis structure was not

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erected upon any Roman measure, and this is demonstrated by the great number of fractions which the measurement of each part, according to European scales, gives. On the contrary the figures become even, as soon as we apply to it the measurement of the ancient cubit, which was common to the Hebrew children of Shem, as well as to the Phœnicians and Egyptians, children of Ham (?), and imitators of the monuments of unhewn and oracular stones.ʺ

The presence of the artificial lakes, and their peculiar disposition on the consecrated grounds, is also a fact of great importance. The lakes inside the precincts of Karnak, and those enclosed in the grounds of Nagkon‐Wat, and around the temples in the Mexican Copan and Santa Cruz del Quiche, will be found to present the same peculiarities. Besides possessing other significances the whole area was laid out with reference to cyclic calculations. In the Druidical structures the same sacred and mysterious numbers will be found. The circle of stones generally consists of either twelve, or twenty‐one, or thirty‐six. In these circles the centre place belongs to Assar, Azon, or the god in the circle, by whatever other name he might have been known. The thirteen Mexican serpent‐gods bear a distant relationship to the thirteen stones of the Druidical ruins.

The Τ (Tau), and the astronomical cross of Egypt are conspicuous in several apertures of the remains of Palenque. In one of the basso‐relievos of the Palace of Palenque, on the west side, sculptured on a hieroglyphic, right under the seated figure, is a Tau. The standing figure, which leans over

the first one, is in the act of covering its head with the left hand with the veil of initiation; while it extends its right with the index and middle finger pointing to heaven. The position is precisely that of a Christian bishop giving his blessing, or the one in which Jesus is often represented while at the Last Supper. Even the Hindu elephant‐headed god of wisdom (or magic learning), Ganesha, may be found among the stucco figures of the Mexican ruins.

THE EGYPTIAN TAU AT PALENQUE

What explanation can the archæologists, philologists — in short, the chosen host of Academicians — give us? None whatever. At best they have but hypotheses, every one of which is likely to be pulled down by its successor — a pseudo‐truth, perhaps, like the first. The keys to the biblical miracles of old, and to the phenomena of modern days; the problems of psychology, physiology, and the many ʺmissing linksʺ which have so perplexed scientists of late, are all in the hands of secret fraternities. This mystery must be unveiled some day. But till then dark skepticism will constantly interpose its threatening, ugly shadow between Godʹs truths and the spiritual vision of mankind; and many are those who, infected by the mortal epidemic of our century — hopeless materialism — will remain in doubt and mortal agony as to whether, when man dies, he will live again, although the question has been solved by long bygone generations of sages. The answers are there. They may be found on the time‐ worn granite pages of cave‐temples, on sphinxes, propylons,

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and obelisks. They have stood there for untold ages, and neither the rude assault of time, nor the still ruder assault of Christian hands, have succeeded in obliterating their records. All covered with the problems which were solved — who can tell? perhaps by the archaic forefathers of their builders — the solution follows each question; and this the Christian could not appropriate, for, except the initiates, no one has understood the mystic writing. The key was in the keeping of those who knew how to commune with the invisible Presence, and who had received, from the lips of mother Nature herself, her grand truths. And so stand these monuments like mute forgotten sentinels on the threshold of that unseen world, whose gates are thrown open but to a few elect.

Defying the hand of Time, the vain inquiry of profane science, the insults of the revealed religions, they will disclose their riddles to none but the legatees of those by whom they were entrusted with the MYSTERY. The cold, stony lips of the once vocal Memnon, and of these hardy sphinxes, keep their secrets well. Who will unseal them? Who of our modern, materialistic dwarfs and unbelieving Sadducees will dare to lift the VEIL OF ISIS?

CHAPTER XV

ʺSTE. — Have we devils here? Do you put tricks upon us with savages, and men of Inde?ʺ

The Tempest, Act ii., Sc. 2

ʺWe have now, so far forth as it is requisite for our design, considered the Nature and Functions of the Soule; and have plainly demonstrated that she is a substance distinct from the body.ʺ

DR. HENRY MORE, Immortality of the Soule, 1659

ʺKNOWLEDGE IS POWER; IGNORANCE IS IMBECILITY.ʺ

AUTHOR OF ʺART‐MAGICʺ, Ghost‐Land

THE ʺsecret doctrineʺ has for many centuries been like the symbolical ʺman of sorrowsʺ of the prophet Isaiah. ʺWho hath believed our report?ʺ its martyrs have repeated from one generation to another. The doctrine has grown up before its persecutors ʺas a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground; it hath no form, nor comeliness . . . it is despised and rejected of men; and they hid their faces from it. . . . They esteemed him not.ʺ

There need be no controversy as to whether this doctrine agrees or not with the iconoclastic tendency of the skeptics of our times. It agrees with truth and that is enough. It would be idle to expect that it would be believed by its detractors and slanderers. But the tenacious vitality it exhibits all over the globe, wherever there are a group of men to quarrel over it, is

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the best proof that the seed planted by our fathers on ʺthe other side of the floodʺ was that of a mighty oak, not the spore of a mushroom theology. No lightning of human ridicule can fell to the ground, and no thunderbolts ever forged by the Vulcans of science are powerful enough to blast the trunk, or even scar the branches of this world‐tree of

KNOWLEDGE.

We have but to leave unnoticed their letter that killeth, and catch the subtile spirit of their hidden wisdom, to find concealed in the Books of Hermes — be they the model or the copy of all others — the evidences of a truth and philosophy which we feel must be based on the eternal laws. We instinctively comprehend that, however finite the powers of man, while he is yet embodied, they must be in close kinship with the attributes of an infinite Deity; and we become capable of better appreciating the hidden sense of the gift lavished by the Elohim on HʹAdam: ʺBehold, I have given you everything which is upon the face of all the earth . . . subdue it,ʺ and ʺhave dominionʺ over ALL.

Had the allegories contained in the first chapters of Genesis been better understood, even in their geographical and historical sense, which involve nothing at all esoteric, the claims of its true interpreters, the kabalists, could hardly have been rejected for so long a time. Every student of the Bible must be aware that the first and second chapters of Genesis could not have proceeded from the same pen. They are evidently allegories and parables;* for the two narratives of the creation and peopling of our earth diametrically

contradict each other in nearly every particular of order, time, place, and methods employed in the so‐called creation. In accepting the narratives literally, and as a whole, we lower the dignity of the unknown Deity. We drag him down to the level of humanity, and endow him with the peculiar personality of man, who needs the ʺcool of the dayʺ to refresh him; who rests from his labors; and is capable of anger, revenge, and even of using precautions against man, ʺlest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life.ʺ (A tacit admission, by the way, on the part of the Deity, that man could do it, if not prevented by sheer force.) But, in recognizing the allegorical coloring of the description of what may be termed historical facts, we find our feet instantly on firm ground.

ACQUISITION OF THE ʺSECRET DOCTRINEʺ

To begin with — the garden of Eden as a locality is no myth at all; it belongs to those landmarks of history which occasionally disclose to the student that the Bible is not all mere allegory. ʺEden, or the Hebrew ןדע־ןג GAN‐EDEN, meaning the park or the garden of Eden, is an archaic name of the country watered by the Euphrates and its many branches, from Asia and Armenia to the Erythraian Sea.ʺ* In the Chaldean Book of Numbers, its location is designated in numerals, and in the cipher Rosicrucian manuscript, left by

* See Paul to the Galatians, iv., 24, and Gospel According to Matthew, xiii.

10‐15.

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Count St. Germain, it is fully described. In the Assyrian Tablets, it is rendered gan‐dunyas. ʺBehold,ʺ say the םהלא Eloim of Genesis, ʺthe man is become as one of us.ʺ The Eloim may be accepted in one sense for gods or powers, and taken in another one for the Aleim, or priests; the hierophants initiated into the good and the evil of this world; for there was a college of priests called the Aleim, while the head of their caste, or the chief of the hierophants, was known as Java Aleim. Instead of becoming a neophyte, and gradually obtaining his esoteric knowledge through a regular initiation, an Adam, or man, uses his intuitional faculties, and, prompted by the Serpent — Woman and matter — tastes of the Tree of Knowledge — the esoteric or secret doctrine — unlawfully. The priests of Hercules, or Mel‐Karth, the ʺLordʺ of the Eden, all wore ʺcoats of skin.ʺ The text says: ʺAnd Java Aleim, made for Adam and his wife דזע תרגתב ʺCHITONUTH OUR.ʺ The first Hebrew word, chitun, is the Greek χιτϖν, chiton. It became a Slavonic word by adoption from the Bible, and means a coat, an upper garment.

Though containing the same substratum of esoteric truth as every early cosmogony, the Hebrew Scripture wears on its face the marks of its double origin. Its Genesis is purely a reminiscence of the Babylonian captivity. The names of places, men, and even objects, can be traced from the original text to the Chaldeans and the Akkadians, the progenitors and Aryan instructors of the former. It is strongly contested that the Akkad tribes of Chaldea, Babylonia, and Assyria were in any way cognate with the Brahmans, of Hindustan; but there

are more proofs in favor of this opinion than otherwise. The Shemite, or Assyrian, ought, perchance, to have been called the Turanian, and the Mongolians have been denominated Scyths. But if the Akkadians ever existed otherwise than in the imagination of some philologists and ethnologists, they certainly would never have been a Turanian tribe, as some Assyriologists have striven to make us believe. They were simply emigrants on their way to Asia Minor from India, the cradle of humanity, and their sacerdotal adepts tarried to civilize and initiate a barbarian people. Halevy proved the fallacy of the Turanian mania in regard to the Akkadian people, whose very name has been changed a dozen times already; and other scientists have proved that the Babylonian civilization was neither born nor developed in that country. It was imported from India, and the importers were Brahmanical Hindus.

It is the opinion of Professor A. Wilder, that if the Assyrians had been called Turanians and the Mongolians Scyths, then, in such a case the wars of Iran and Turan, Zohak and Jemshid, or Yima, would have been fairly comprehended as the struggle of the old Persians against the endeavors of the Assyrian satraps to conquer them, which ended in the overthrow of Nineveh; ʺthe spider weaving her web in the palace of Afrasiab.ʺ*

* The appropriate definition of the name ʺTuranianʺ is, any ethnic family that ethnologists know nothing about.

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ʺThe Turanian of Prof. Müller and his school,ʺ adds our correspondent, ʺwas evidently the savage and nomadic Caucasian, out of whom the Hamite or Æthiopian builders come; then the Shemites — perhaps a hybrid of Hamite and Aryan; and lastly the Aryan — Median, Persian, Hindu; and later, the Gothic and Slavic peoples of Europe. He supposes the Celt to have been a hybrid, analogous to the Assyrians — between the Aryan invaders of Europe and the Iberic (probably Æthiopic) population of Europe.ʺ In such a case he must admit the possibility of our assertion that the Akkadians were a tribe of the earliest Hindus. Now, whether they were Brahmans, from the Brahmanic planisphere proper (40° north latitude), or from India (Hindustan), or, again, from the India of Central Asia, we will leave to philologists of future ages to decide.

TWO RELICS OWNED BY A PALI SCHOLAR

An opinion which with us amounts to certitude, demonstrated by an inductive method of our own, which we are afraid will be but little appreciated by the orthodox methods of modern science, is based on what will appear to the latter merely circumstantial evidence. For years we have repeatedly noticed that the same esoteric truths were expressed in identical symbols and allegories in countries between which there had never been traced any historical affiliation. We have found the Jewish Kabala and the Bible

repeating the Babylonian ʺmyths,ʺ* and the Oriental and Chaldean allegories, given in form and substance in the oldest manuscripts of the Siamese Talapoin (monks), and in the popular but oldest traditions of Ceylon.

In the latter place we have an old and valued acquaintance whom we have also met in other parts of the globe, a Pali scholar, and a native Cingalese, who has in his possession a curious palm leaf, to which, by chemical processes, a timeproof durability has been given, and an enormous conch, or rather one‐half of a conch — for it has been split in two. On the leaf we saw the representation of a giant of Ceylonian antiquity and fame, blind, and pulling down — with his outstretched arms, which are embracing the four central pillars of a pagoda — the whole temple on a crowd of armed enemies. His hair is long and reaches nearly to the ground. We were informed by the possessor of this curious relic, that the blind giant was ʺSomona, the Littleʺ; so called in contradistinction with Somona‐Kadom, the Siamese saviour. Moreover, the Pali legend, in as important particulars, corresponds with that of the biblical Samson.

The shell bore upon its pearly surface a pictorial engraving, divided in two compartments, and the workmanship was far more artistic, as to conception and execution, than the crucifixes and other religious trinkets carved out of the same material in our days, at Jaffa and

* See Berosus and Sanchoniathon; Coryʹs ʺAncient Fragmentsʺ; Movers,

and others.

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Jerusalem. In the first panel is represented Siva, with all his Hindu attributes, sacrificing his son — whether the ʺonly‐ begotten,ʺ or one of many, we never stopped to inquire. The victim is laid on a funeral pile, and the father is hovering in the air over him, with an uplifted weapon ready to strike; but the godʹs face is turned toward a jungle in which a rhinoceros has deeply buried its horn in a huge tree and is unable to extricate it. The adjoining panel, or division, represents the same rhinoceros on the pile with the weapon plunged in its side, and the intended victim — Sivaʹs son — free, and helping the god to kindle the fire upon the sacrificial altar.

Now, we have but to remember that Siva and the Palentinian Baal, or Moloch, and Saturn are identical; that Abraham is held until the present day by the Mahometan Arabs as Saturn in the Kaaba;* that Abraham and Israel were names of Saturn;† and that Sanchoniathon tells us that Saturn offered his only‐begotten son as a sacrifice to his father Ouranos, and even circumcised himself and forced all his household and allies to do the same,‡ to trace unerringly the biblical myth to its source. But this source is neither Phœnician, nor Chaldean; it is purely Indian, and the original of it may be found in the Maha‐Bharata. But, whether Brahmanical or Buddhistical, it must certainly be much older than the Jewish Pentateuch, as compiled by Ezra after the

* Movers, 86.
† Ibid.

‡ Sanchon., in Coryʹs ʺFragments,ʺ p. 14.

Babylonian captivity, and revised by the Rabbis of the Great Synagogue.

JEALOUS EXCLUSIVENESS OF THE HINDUS

Therefore, we are bold enough to maintain our assertion against the opinion of many men of learning, whom, nevertheless, we consider far more learned than ourselves. Scientific induction is one thing, and knowledge of facts, however unscientific they may seem at first, is another. But science has discovered enough to inform us that Sanscrit originals, of Nepaul, were translated by Buddhistic missionaries into nearly every Asiatic language. Likewise Pali manuscripts were translated into Siamese, and carried to Burmah and Siam; it is easy, therefore, to account for the same religious legends and myths circulating in all these countries.

But Manetho tells us also of Pali shepherds who emigrated westward; and when we find some of the oldest Ceylonic traditions in the Chaldean Kabala and Jewish Bible, we must think that either Chaldeans or Babylonians had been in Ceylon or India, or the ancient Pali had the same traditions as the Akkadians, whose origin is so uncertain. Suppose even Rawlinson to be right, and that the Akkadians did come from Armenia, he did not trace them farther back. As the field is now opened for any kind of hypothesis, we submit that this tribe might as well have come to Armenia from beyond the Indus, following their way in the direction of the Caspian Sea

— a part which was also India, once upon a time — and from

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thence to the Euxine. Or they might have come originally from Ceylon by the same way. It has been found impossible to follow, with any degree of certitude, the wanderings of these nomadic Aryan tribes; hence we are left to judge from inference, and by comparing their esoteric myths. Abraham himself, for all our scientists can know, might have been one of these Pali shepherds who emigrated West. He is shown to have gone with his father, Terah, from ʺUr of the Chaldeesʺ; and Sir H. Rawlinson found the Phœnician city of Martu or Marathos mentioned in an inscription at Ur, and shows it to signify THE WEST.

If their language seems in one sense to oppose their identity with the Brahmans of Hindustan, yet there are other reasons which make good our claims that the biblical allegories of Genesis are entirely due to these nomadic tribes. Their name Ak‐ad, is of the same class as Ad‐Am, Ha‐va,* or Ed‐En — ʺperhaps,ʺ says Dr. Wilder, ʺmeaning son of Ad, like the sons of Ad in ancient Arabia. In Assyrian, Ak is creator and Ad‐ad is AD, the father.ʺ In Aramean Ad also means one, and Ad‐ad the only‐one; and in the Kabala Ad‐ant is the only‐ begotten, the first emanation of the unseen Creator. Adon was

* In an old Brahmanical book called the ʺProphecies,ʺ by Ramatsariar, as well as in the Southern MSS. in the legend of Christna, the latter gives nearly word for word the first two chapters of Genesis. He recounts the creation of man — whom he calls Adima, in Sanscrit, the ʹfirst manʹ — and the first woman is called Heva, that which completes life. According to Louis Jacolliot (ʺLa Bible dans lʹIndeʺ), Christna existed, and his legend was written, over 3,000 years B.C.

the ʺLordʺ god of Syria and the consort of Adar‐gat, or Aster‐ ʹt,ʹ the Syrian goddess, who was Venus, Isis, Istar, or Mylitta, etc.; and each of these was ʺmother of all livingʺ — the Magna Mater.

Thus, while the first, second, and third chapters of Genesis are but disfigured imitations of other cosmogonies, the fourth chapter, beginning at the sixteenth verse, and the fifth chapter to the end — give purely historical facts; though the latter were never correctly interpreted. They are taken, word for word, from the secret Book of Numbers, of the Great Oriental Kabala. From the birth of Enoch, the appropriated first parent of modern Freemasonry, begins the genealogy of the so‐called Turanian, Aryan, and Semitic families, if such they be correctly. Every woman is an euhemerized land or city; every man and patriarch a race, a branch, or a subdivision of a race. The wives of Lamech give the key to the riddle which some good scholar might easily master, even without studying the esoteric sciences. ʺAnd Ad‐ah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle,ʺ nomadic Aryan race; ʺ . . . and his brother was Jubal; he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ; . . . and Zillah bare Tubal‐Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron,ʺ etc. Every word has a significance; but it is no revelation. It is simply a compilation of the most historical facts, although history is too perplexed upon this point to know how to claim them. It is from the Euxine to Kashmere, and beyond that we must search for the cradle of mankind and the sons of Ad‐ah; and leave the particular garden of Ed‐en on the Euphrates to

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the college of the weird astrologers and magi, the Aleim.* No wonder that the Northern seer, Swedenborg, advises people to search for the LOST WORD among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Thibet; for it is there, and only there now, although we find it inscribed on the monuments of the oldest Egyptian dynasties. The grandiose poetry of the four Vedas; the Books of Hermes; the Chaldean Book of Numbers; the Nazarene Codex; the Kabala of the Tanaim; the Sepher Jezira; the

Book of Wisdom, of Schlomah (Solomon); the secret treatise on Muhta and Badha† attributed by the Buddhist kabalists to Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya system; the Brahmanas;‡ he Stan‐gyour,§ of the Thibetans; all these volumes have the

* Adah in Hebrew is הדע, and Eden, ןדע. The first is a womanʹs name; the second the designation of a country. They are closely related to each other; but hardly to Adam and Akkad — םרא, דקא which are spelled with aleph.

† The two words answer to the terms, Macroprosopos, or macrocosm — the absolute and boundless, and the Microprosopos of the ʺKabala,ʺ the ʺshort face,ʺ or the microcosm — the finite and conditioned. It is not translated; nor is it likely to be. The Thibetean monks say that it is the real ʺSutrâs.ʺ Some Buddhists believe that Buddha was, in a previous existence, Kapila himself. We do not see how several Sanscrit scholars can entertain the idea that Kapila was an atheist, while every legend shows him the most ascetic mystic, the founder of the sect of the Yogis.

‡ The ʺBrahmanasʺ were translated by Dr. Haug; see his ʺAitareya Brahmanam.ʺ

§ The ʺStan‐gyourʺ is full of rules of magic, the study of occult powers, and their acquisition, charms, incantations, etc.; and is as little understood by its lay‐interpreters as the Jewish ʺBibleʺ is by our clergy, or the ʺKabalaʺ by the European Rabbis.

same ground‐work. Varying but in allegories they teach the same secret doctrine which, when once thoroughly eliminated, will prove to be the Ultima Thule of true philosophy, and disclose what is this LOST WORD. It is useless to expect scientists to find in these works anything of interest except that which is in direct relation to either philology or comparative mythology. Even Max Müller, as soon as he refers to the mysticism and metaphysical philosophy scattered through the old Sanscrit literature, sees in it naught but ʺtheological absurditiesʺ and ʺfantastic nonsense.ʺ Speaking of the Brahmanas, all full of mysterious, therefore, as a matter of course, absurd, meanings, we find him saying: ʺThe greater portion of them is simply twaddle, and what is worse, theological twaddle. No person who is not acquainted beforehand with the place which the Brahmanas fill in the history of the Indian mind, could read more than ten pages without being disgusted.ʺ** We do not wonder at the severe criticism of this erudite scientist.

Without a clew to the real meaning of this ʺtwaddleʺ of religious conceptions, how can they judge of the esoteric by the exoteric? We find an answer in another of the highly‐ interesting lectures of the German savant: ʺNo Jew, no Roman, no Brahman ever thought of converting people to his own national form of worship. Religion was looked upon as private or national property. It was to be guarded against strangers. The most sacred names of the gods, the prayers by

** ʺAitareya Brahmana,ʺ Lecture by Max Müller.

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which their favor could be gained, were kept secret. No religion was more exclusive than that of the Brahmans.ʺ*

Therefore, when we find scholars who imagine, because they have learned the meaning of a few exoteric rites from a srotriya, a Brahman priest initiated in the sacrificial mysteries, that they are capable of interpreting all the symbols, and have sifted the Hindu religions, we cannot help admiring the completeness of their scientific delusions. The more so, since we find Max Müller himself asserting that since ʺa Brahman was born — nay, twice‐born, and could not be made, not even the lowest caste, that of the Sudras, would open its ranks to a stranger.ʺ How much less likely that he would allow that stranger to unveil to the world his most sacred religious Mysteries, the secret of which has been guarded so jealously from profanation throughout untold ages.

No; our scientists do not — nay, cannot understand correctly the old Hindu literature, any more than an atheist or materialist is able to appreciate at their just value the feelings of a seer, a mystic, whose whole life is given to contemplation. They have a perfect right to soothe themselves with the sweet lullaby of their self‐admiration, and the just consciousness of their great learning, but none at all to lead the world into their own error, by making it believe that they have solved the last problem of ancient thought in literature, whether Sanscrit or any other; that there lies not behind the external ʺtwaddleʺ far more than was ever dreamed of by our

* Ibid., ʺBuddhist Pilgrims.ʺ

modern exact philosophy; or that above and beyond the correct rendering of Sanscrit words and sentences there is no deeper thought, intelligible to some of the descendants of those who veiled it in the morning hours of earthʹs day, if they are not to the profane reader.

We do not feel in the least astonished that a materialist, and even an orthodox Christian, is unable to read either the old Brahmanical works or their progeny, the Kabala, the Codex of Bardesanes, or the Jewish Scripture without disgust at their immodesty and apparent lack of what the uninitiated reader is pleased to call ʺcommon sense.ʺ But if we can hardly blame them for such a feeling, especially in the case of the Hebrew, and even the Greek and Latin literature, and are quite ready to agree with Professor Fiske that ʺit is a mark of wisdom to be dissatisfied with imperfect evidenceʺ; on the other hand we have a right to expect that they should recognize that it is no less a mark of honesty to confess oneʹs ignorance in cases where there are two sides to the question, and in the solution of which the scientist may as easily blunder as any ignoramus. When we find Professor Draper, in his definition of periods in the Intellectual Development of Europe, classifying the time from the days of Socrates, the precursor and teacher of Plato, to Karneades, as ʺthe age of faithʺ; and that from Philo to the destruction of the Neo‐platonic schools by Justinian — the ʺage of decrepitude,ʺ we may be allowed to infer that the learned professor knows as little about the real tendency of Greek philosophy and the Attic schools as he understood the true character of Giordano Bruno. So when

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we see one of the best of Sanscrit scholars stating on his own unsupported authority that the ʺgreater portion of the Brahmanas is simply theological twaddle,ʺ we deeply regret to think that Professor Müller must be far better acquainted with the old Sanscrit verbs and nouns than with Sanscrit thought; and that a scholar so uniformly disposed to do justice to the religions and the men of old should so effectually play into the hands of Christian theologians. ʺWhat is the use of Sanscrit?ʺ exclaims Jacquemont, who alone has made more false statements about the East than all the Orientalists put together. At such a rate there would be none indeed. If we are to exchange one corpse for another, then we may as well dissect the dead letter of the Jewish Bible as that of the Vedas. He who is not intuitionally vivified by the religious spirit of old, will never see beyond the exoteric ʺtwaddle.ʺ

When first we read that ʺin the cavity of the cranium of Macroprosopos — the Long‐Face — lies hidden the aërial WISDOM which nowhere is opened; and it is not discovered, and not openedʺ; or again, that ʺthe nose of the ʹancient of daysʹ is Life in every partʺ; we are inclined to regard it as the incoherent ravings of a lunatic. And when, moreover, we are apprized by the Codex Nazaræus that ʺshe, the Spiritus,ʺ invites her son Karabtanos, ʺwho is frantic and without judgment,ʺ to an unnatural crime with his own mother, we are pretty well disposed to throw the book aside in disgust. But is this only meaningless trash, expressed in rude and even obscene language? No more can it be judged by external appearance

than the sexual symbols of the Egyptian and Hindu religions, or the coarse frankness of expression of the ʺholyʺ Bible itself. No more than the allegory of Eve and the tempting serpent of Eden. The ever‐insinuating, restless spirit, when once it ʺfalls into matter,ʺ tempts Eve, or Hava, which bodily represent chaotic matter ʺfrantic and without judgment.ʺ For matter, Karabtanos, is the son of Spirit, or the Spiritus of the Nazarenes, the Sophia‐Achamoth, and the latter is the daughter of the pure, intellectual spirit, the divine breath. When science shall have effectually demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved the fallacy of the occultists and old philosophers who held (as their descendants now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of spirit, then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the old Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old religions.

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LYDIA MARIA CHILD ON PHALLIC SYMBOLISM

ʺFrom time immemorial,ʺ* says Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, ʺan emblem has been worshipped in Hindustan as the type of creation, or the origin of life. It is the most common symbol of Siva [Bala, or Maha‐Deva], and is universally connected with his worship. . . . Siva was not merely the reproducer of human forms; he represented the fructifying principle, the generative power that pervades the universe. . . . Small images of this emblem carved in ivory, gold, or crystal, are worn as ornaments about the neck. . . . The maternal emblem is likewise a religious type; and worshippers of Vishnu represent it on their forehead by a horizontal mark. . . . Is it strange that they regarded with reverence the great mystery of human birth? Were they impure thus to regard it? Or are we impure that we do not so regard it? We have travelled far, and unclean have been the paths, since those old Anchorites first spoke of God and the soul in the solemn depths of their first sanctuaries. Let us not smile at their mode of tracing the infinite and incomprehensible Cause throughout all the mysteries of nature, lest by so doing we cast the shadow of our own grossness on their patriarchal simplicity.ʺ

Many are the scholars who have tried, to the best of their ability, to do justice to old India. Colebrooke, Sir William Jones, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Lassen, Weber, Strange, Burnouf, Hardy, and finally Jacolliot, have all brought

forward their testimony to her achievements in legislation, ethics, philosophy, and religion. No people in the world have ever attained to such a grandeur of thought in ideal conceptions of the Deity and its offspring, MAN, as the Sanscrit metaphysicians and theologians. ʺMy complaint against many translators and Orientalists,ʺ says Jacolliot, ʺwhile admiring their profound knowledge is, that not having lived in India, they fail in exactness of expression and in comprehension of the symbolical sense of poetic chants, prayers, and ceremonies, and thus too often fall into material errors, whether of translation or appreciation.ʺ† Further, this author who, from a long residence in India, and the study of its literature, is better qualified to testify than those who have never been there, tells us that ʺthe life of several generations would scarce suffice merely to read the works that ancient India has left us on history, ethics (morale), poetry, philosophy, religion, different sciences, and medicine.ʺ And yet Louis Jacolliot is able to judge but by the few fragments, access to which had ever depended on the complaisance and friendship of a few Brahmans with whom he succeeded in becoming intimate. Did they show him all their treasures? Did they explain to him all he desired to learn? We doubt it, otherwise he would not himself have judged their religious ceremonies so hastily as he has upon several occasions merely upon circumstantial evidence.

Still, no traveller has shown himself fairer in the main or more impartial to India than Jacolliot. If he is severe as to her present degradation, he is still severer to those who were the cause of it — the sacerdotal caste of the last few centuries — and his rebuke is proportionate to the intensity of his appreciation of her past grandeur. He shows the sources whence proceeded the revelations of all the ancient creeds, including the inspired Books of Moses, and points at India directly as the cradle of humanity, the parent of all other nations, and the hot‐bed of all the lost arts and sciences of antiquity, for which old India, herself, was lost already in the Cimmerian darkness of the archaic ages. ʺTo study India,ʺ he says, ʺis to trace humanity to its sources.ʺ

ʺIn the same way as modern society jostles antiquity at each step,ʺ he adds, ʺas our poets have copied Homer and Virgil, Sophocles and Euripides, Plautus and Terence; as our philosophers have drawn inspiration from Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle; as our historians take Titus Livius, Sallust, or Tacitus, as models; our orators, Demosthenes or Cicero; our physicians study Hippocrates, and our codes transcribe Justinian — so had antiquityʹs self also an antiquity to study, to imitate, and to copy. What more simple and more logical? Do not peoples precede and succeed each other? Does the knowledge, painfully acquired by one nation, confine itself to its own territory, and die with the generation that produced it? Can there be any absurdity in the suggestion that the India of 6,000 years ago, brilliant, civilized, overflowing with population, impressed upon

Egypt, Persia, Judea, Greece, and Rome, a stamp as ineffaceable, impressions as profound, as these last have impressed upon us?

ʺIt is time to disabuse ourselves of those prejudices which represent the ancients as having almost spontaneously‐ elaborated ideas, philosophic, religious, and moral, the most lofty — those prejudices that in their naive admiration explain all in the domain of science, arts, and letters, by the intuition of some few great men, and in the realm of religion by revelation.ʺ*

We believe that the day is not far off when the opponents of this fine and erudite writer will be silenced by the force of irrefutable evidence. And when facts shall once have corroborated his theories and assertions, what will the world find? That it is to India, the country less explored, and less known than any other, that all the other great nations of the world are indebted for their languages, arts, legislature, and civilization. Its progress, impeded for a few centuries before our era — for, as this writer shows, at the epoch of the great Macedonian conqueror, ʺIndia had already passed the period of her splendorʺ — was completely stifled in the subsequent ages. But the evidence of her past glories lies in her literature. What people in all the world can boast of such a literature, which, were the Sanscrit less difficult, would be more studied than now? Hitherto the general public has had to rely for information on a few scholars who, notwithstanding their

* ʺLa Bible dans lʹInde.ʺ

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great learning and trustworthiness, are unequal to the task of translating and commenting upon more than a few books out of the almost countless number that, notwithstanding the vandalism of the missionaries, are still left to swell the mighty volume of Sanscrit literature. And to do even so much is the labor of a Europeanʹs lifetime. Hence, people judge hastily, and often make the most ridiculous blunders.

Quite recently a certain Reverend Dunlop Moore, of New Brighton, Pa., determined to show his cleverness and piety at a single stroke, attacked the statement made by a Theosophist in a discourse delivered at the cremation of Baron de Palm, that the Code of Manu existed a thousand years before Moses. ʺAll Orientalists of any note,ʺ he says, ʺare now agreed that the Institutes of Manu were written at different times. The oldest part of the collection probably dates from the sixth century before the Christian era.ʺ* Whatever other Orientalists, encountered by this Pennsylvania pundit, may think, Sir William Jones is of a different opinion. ʺIt is clear,ʺ he says, ʺthat the Laws of Manu, such as we possess them, and which comprise but 680 slokas, cannot be the work attributed to Soumati, which is probably that described under the name of

Vriddha Manava, or Ancient Code of Manu, which has not yet been entirely reconstructed, although many passages of the book have been preserved by tradition, and are often cited by commentators.ʺ

ʺWe read in the preface to a treatise on legislation by Narada,ʺ says Jacolliot, ʺwritten by one of his adepts, a client of Brahmanical power: ʹManu having written the laws of Brahma, in 100,000 slokas, or distichs, which formed twenty‐ four books and a thousand chapters, gave the work to Narada, the sage of sages, who abridged it for the use f mankind to 12,000 verses, which he gave to a son of Brighou, named Soumati, who, for the greater convenience of man, reduced them to 4,000.ʹ ʺ

Here we have the opinion of Sir William Jones, who, in 1794, affirmed that the fragments in possession of the Europeans could not be The Ancient Code of Manu, and that of Louis Jacolliot, who, in 1868, after consulting all the authorities, and adding to them the result of his own long and patient research, writes the following: ʺThe Hindu laws were codified by Manu more than 3,000 years before the Christian era, copied by the whole of antiquity, and notably by Rome, which alone has left us a written law — the Code of Justinian; which has been adopted as the basis of all modern legislations.ʺ† In another volume, entitled Christna et le Christ, in a scientific arraignment of a pious, albeit very learned Catholic antagonist, M. Textor de Ravisi, who seeks to prove that the orthography of the name Christna is not warranted by its Sanscrit spelling — and has the worst of it — Jacolliot remarks: ʺWe know that the legislator Manu is lost in the night of the ante‐historical period of India; and that no

* ʺPresbyterian Banner,ʺ December 20, 1876. † ʺLa Bible dans lʹInde.ʺ

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Indianist has dared to refuse him the title of the most ancient law‐giver in the worldʺ (p. 350).

But Jacolliot had not heard of the Rev. Dunlop Moore. This is why, perhaps, he and several other Indiologists are preparing to prove that many of the Vedic texts, as well as those of Manu, sent to Europe by the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, are not genuine texts at all, but mostly due to the cunning tentative efforts of certain Jesuit missionaries to mislead science, by the help of apocryphal works calculated at once to throw upon the history of ancient India a cloud of uncertainty and darkness, and on the modern Brahmans and pundits a suspicion of systematical interpolation. ʺThese facts,ʺ he adds, ʺwhich are so well established in India that they are not even brought in question, must be revealed to Europeʺ (Christna et le Christ, p. 347).

Moreover, the Code of Manu, known to European Orientalists as that one which is commented upon by Brighou, does not even form a part of the ancient Manu called the Vriddha‐Manava. Although but small fragments of it have been discovered by our scientists, it does exist as a whole in certain temples; and Jacolliot proves that the texts sent to Europe disagree entirely with the same texts as found in the pagodas of Southern India. We can also cite for our purpose Sir William Jones, who, complaining of Callouca, remarks that the latter seems in his commentaries to have never considered that ʺthe laws of Manu are restricted to the first three agesʺ (Translation of Manu and Commentaries).

THE AGE OF THE VEDAS AND MANU

According to computation we are now in the age of Kali‐ Yug, the third, reckoning from that of Satya or Kritayug, first age in which Hindu tradition establishes the laws of Manu, and the authenticity of which Sir William Jones implicitly accepted. Admitting all that may be said as to the enormous exaggerations of Hindu chronology — which, by the bye, dovetails far better with modern geology and anthropology than the 6,000 yearsʹ caricature chronology of the Jewish Scripture — still as about 4,500 years have elapsed since the fourth age of the world, or Kali‐Yug, began, we have here a proof that one of the greatest Orientalists that ever lived — and a Christian in the bargain, not a Theosophist — believed that Manu is many thousand years older than Moses. Clearly one of two things should happen: Either Indian history should be remodelled for the Presbyterian Banner, or the writers for that sheet should study Hindu literature before trying their hand again at criticism of Theosophists.

But apart from the private opinions of these reverend gentlemen whose views very little concern us, we find even in the New American Cyclopædia a decided tendency to dispute the antiquity and importance of the Hindu literature. The Laws of Manu, says one of the writers, ʺdo not date earlier than the third century B.C.ʺ This term is a very elastic one. If by the Laws of Manu the writer means the abridgment of these laws, compiled and arranged by later Brahmans to serve as an authority for their ambitious projects, and with an idea of creating for themselves a rule of domination, then, in such a

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sense, they may be right, though we are prepared to dispute even that. At all events it is as little proper to pass off this abridgment for the genuine old laws codified by Manu, as to assert that the Hebrew Bible does not date earlier than the tenth century of our era, because we have no Hebrew manuscript older than that, or that the poems of Homerʹs Iliad were neither known nor written before its first authenticated manuscript was found. There is no Sanscrit manuscript in the possession of European scholars much older than four or five centuries,* a fact which did not in the least restrain them from assigning to the Vedas an antiquity of between four or five thousand years. There are the strongest possible arguments in favor of the great antiquity of the Books of Manu, and without going to the trouble of quoting the opinions of various scholars, no two of whom agree, we will bring forward our own, at least as regards this most unwarranted assertion of the Cyclopædia.

If, as Jacolliot proves, text in hand, the Code of Justinian was copied from the Laws of Manu, we have first of all to ascertain the age of the former; not as a written and perfect code, but its origin. To answer, is not difficult we believe.

According to Varro, Rome was built in 3961 of the Julian period (754 B.C.). The Roman Law, as embodied by order of Justinian, and known as the Corpus Juris Civilis, was not a code, we are told, but a digest of the customs of legislation of many centuries. Though nothing is actually known of the

* See Max Müllerʹs ʺLecture on the Vedas.ʺ

original authorities, the chief source from which the jus scriptum, or written law, was derived, was the jus non scriptum, or the law of custom. Now it is just on this law of custom that we are prepared to base our arguments. The law of the twelve tables, moreover, was compiled about A.U.C. 300, and even this as respects private law was compiled from still earlier sources. Therefore, if these earlier sources are found to agree so well with the Laws of Manu, which the Brahmans claim to have been codified in the Kritayug, an age anterior to the actual Kali‐yug, then we must suppose that this source of the ʺTwelve Tables,ʺ as laws of custom and tradition, are at least, by several hundred years, older than their copyists. This, alone, carries us right back to more than 1,000 years B.C.

The Manava Dharma Sastra, embodying the Hindu system of cosmogony, is recognized as next to the Vedas in antiquity; and even Colebrooke assigns the latter to the fifteenth century B.C. And, now, what is the etymology of the name of

Manava Dharma Sastra? It is a word compounded of Manu; dʹharma, institute; and sastra, command or law. How then can Manuʹs laws date only since the third century before our Christian era?

The Hindu Code had never laid any claims to be divinely revealed. The distinction made by the Brahmans themselves between the Vedas and every other sacred book of however respectable an antiquity, is a proof of it. While every sect holds the Vedas as the direct word of God — sruti (revelation)

— the Code of Manu is designated by them simply as the smriti, a collection of oral traditions. Still these traditions, or

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ʺrecollections,ʺ are among the oldest as well as the most revered in the land. But, perhaps, the strongest argument in favor of its antiquity, and the general esteem in which it is held, lies in the following fact. The Brahmans have undeniably remodelled these traditions at some distant period, and made many of the actual laws, as they now stand in the Code of Manu, to answer their ambitious views. Therefore, they must have done it at a time when the burning of widows (suttee) was neither practiced nor intended to be, which it has been for nearly 2,500 years. No more than in the Vedas is there any such atrocious law mentioned in the Code of Manu! Who, unless he is completely unacquainted with the history of India, but knows that this country was once on the verge of a religious rebellion occasioned by the prohibition of suttee by the English government? The Brahmans appealed to a verse from the Rig‐Veda which commanded it. But this verse has been recently proved to have been falsified.* Had the Brahmans been the sole authors of the Code of Manu, or had they codified it entirely instead of simply filling it with interpolations to answer their object not earlier than the time of Alexander, how is it possible that they would have neglected this most important point, and so imperilled its authority? This fact alone proves that the Code must be counted one of their most ancient books.

It is on the strength of such circumstantial evidence — that of reason and logic — that we affirm that, if Egypt furnished Greece with her civilization, and the latter bequeathed hers to Rome, Egypt herself had, in those unknown ages when Menes reigned ,† received her laws, her social institutions, her arts and her sciences, from pre‐Vedic India;‡ and that therefore, it is in that old initiation of the priests — adepts of all the other countries — we must seek for the key to the great mysteries of humanity.

And when we say, indiscriminately, ʺIndia,ʺ we do not mean the India of our modern days, but that of the archaic period. In those ancient times countries which are now known to us by other names were all called India. There was an Upper, a Lower, and a Western India, the latter of which is now Persia‐Iran. The countries now named Thibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary, were also considered by the ancient writers as India. We will now give a legend in relation to those places which science now fully concedes to have been the cradle of humanity.

Tradition says, and the records of the Great Book explain, that long before the days of Ad‐am, and his inquisitive wife, He‐va, where now are found but salt lakes and desolate

barren deserts, there was a vast inland sea, which extended over Middle Asia, north of the proud Himalayan range, and its western prolongation. An island, which for its unparalleled beauty had no rival in the world, was inhabited by the last remnant of the race which preceded ours. This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were the ʺSons of Godʺ; not those who saw the daughters of men, but the real Elohim, though in the Oriental Kabala they have another name. It was they who imparted Natureʹs most weird secrets to men, and revealed to them the ineffable, and now lost ʺword.ʺ

This word, which is no word, has travelled once around the globe, and still lingers as a far‐off dying echo in the hearts of some privileged men. The hierophants of all the Sacerdotal Colleges were aware of the existence of this island, but the ʺwordʺ was known only to the Java Aleim, or chief lord of every college, and was passed to his successor only at the moment of death. There were many such colleges, and the old classic authors speak of them.

We have already seen that it is one of the universal traditions accepted by all the ancient peoples that there were many races of men anterior to our present races. Each of these was distinct from the one which preceded it; and each disappeared as the following appeared. In Manu, six such races are plainly mentioned as having succeeded each other.

ʺFrom this Manu Swayambhouva (the minor, and answering to Adam Kadmon) issued from Swayambhouva, or the Being existing through himself, descended six other

Manus (men typifying progenitors), each of whom gave birth to a race of men. . . . These Manus, all powerful, of whom Swayambhouva is the first, have each, in his period — antara

— produced and directed this world composed of movable and unmovable beingsʺ (Manu, book i.).

In the Siva‐Purana,* it runs thus:

ʺO Siva, thou god of fire, mayest thou destroy my sins, as the bleaching‐grass of the jungle is destroyed by fire. It is through thy mighty Breath that Adhima (the first man) and Heva (completion of life, in Sanscrit), the ancestors of this race of men have received life and covered the world with their descendants.ʺ

There was no communication with the fair island by sea, but subterranean passages known only to the chiefs, communicated with it in all directions. Tradition points to many of the majestic ruins of India, Ellora, Elephanta, and the caverns of Ajunta (Chandor range), which belonged once to those colleges, and with which were connected such subterranean ways.† Who can tell but the lost Atlantis —

† There are archæologists, who, like Mr. James Fergusson, deny the great antiquity of even one single monument in India. In his work,

ʺIllustrations of the Rock‐Cut Temples of India,ʺ the author ventures to express the very extraordinary opinion that ʺEgypt had ceased to be a nation before the earliest of the cave‐temples of India was excavated.ʺ In short, he does not admit the existence of any cave anterior to the reign

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which is also mentioned in the Secret Book, but, again, under another name, pronounced in the sacred language — did not exist yet in those days? The great lost continent might have, perhaps, been situated south of Asia, extending from India to Tasmania?* If the hypothesis now so much doubted, and positively denied by some learned authors who regard it as a joke of Platoʹs, is ever verified, then, perhaps, will the scientists believe that the description of the god‐inhabited continent was not altogether fable. And they may then perceive that Platoʹs guarded hints and the fact of his attributing the narrative to Solon and the Egyptian priests, were but a prudent way of imparting the fact to the world and by cleverly combining truth and fiction, to disconnect himself from a story which the obligations imposed at initiation forbade him to divulge.

And how could the name of Atlanta itself originate with Plato at all? Atlante is not a Greek name, and its construction has nothing of the Grecian element in it. Brasseur de Bourbourg tried to demonstrate it years ago, and Baldwin, in his Prehistoric Nations and Ancient America, cites the former, who declares that ʺthe words Atlas and Atlantic have no

of Asoka, and seems willing to prove that most of these rock‐cut temples were executed from the time of that pious Buddhist king, till the destruction of the Andhra dynasty of Maghada, in the beginning of the fifth century. We believe such a claim perfectly arbitrary. Further discoveries are sure to show how erroneous and unwarranted it was.

* It is a strange coincidence that when first discovered, America was found to bear among some native tribes the name of Atlanta.

satisfactory etymology in any language known in Europe. They are not Greek, and cannot be referred to any known language of the Old World. But in the Nahuatl (or Toltec) language we find immediately the radical a, atl, which signifies water, war, and the top of the head. From this comes a series of words, such as atlan, or the border of or amid the water; from which we have the adjective Atlantic. We have also atlaca, to combat. . . . A city named Atlan existed when the continent was discovered by Columbus, at the entrance of the Gulf of Uraha, in Darien, with a good harbor. It is now reduced to an unimportant pueblo (village) named Aclo.ʺ†

Is it not, to say the least, very extraordinary to find in America a city called by a name which contains a purely local element, foreign moreover to every other country, in the alleged fiction of a philosopher of 400 years B.C.? The same may be said of the name of America, which may one day be found more closely related to Meru, the sacred mount in the centre of the seven continents, according to the Hindu tradition, than to Americus Vespucius, whose name by the bye, was never Americus at all, but Albericus, a trifling difference not deemed worth mentioning till very lately by exact history.‡ We adduce the following reasons in favor of our argument:

† Baldwin, ʺPrehistoric Nations,ʺ p. 179.

‡ Alberico Vespuzio, the son of Anastasio Vespuzio or Vespuchy, is now gravely doubted in regard to the naming of the New world. Indeed the name is said to have occurred in a work written several centuries before. A. Wilder (Notes).

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1st. Americ, Amerrique, or Amerique is the name in Nicaragua for the high land or mountain range that lies between Juigalpa and Libertad, in the province of Chontales, and which reaches on the one side into the country of the Carcas Indians, and on the other side into the country of the Ramas Indians. Ic or ique, as a terminal, means great, as cazique, etc. Columbus mentions, in his fourth voyage, the village Cariai, probably Caicai. The people abounded with sorcerers, or medicine men; and this was the region of the Americ range, 3,000 feet high.

Yet he omits to mention this word. The name America Provincia, first appeared on a map published at Basle, in 1522. Till that time, the region was believed to be part of India. That year Nicaragua was conquered by Gil Gonzales de Avida.*

2d. ʺThe Northmen who visited the continent in the tenth century,† a low level coast thickly covered with wood,ʺ called it Markland, from mark, a wood. The r had a rolling sound as in marrick. A similar word is found in the country of the Himalayas, and the name of the World‐Mountain, Meru, is pronounced in some dialects as MERUAH, the letter h being strongly aspirated. The main idea is, however, to show how two peoples could possibly accept a word of similar sound, each having used it in their own sense, and finding it applied to the same territory. ʺIt is most plausible,ʺ says Professor Wilder, ʺthat the State of Central America, where we find the

* See Thomas Belt, ʺThe Naturalists in Nicaragua.ʺ London, 1873.

† Torfieus, ʺHistoria Vinlandiæ Antiquæ.ʺ

name Americ signifying (like the Hindu Meru we may add) great mountain, gave the continent its name. Vespucius would have used his surname if he had designed to give a title to a continent. If the Abbé de Bourbourgʹs theory of Atlan as the source of Atlas and Atlantic is verified, the two hypotheses could agree most charmingly. As Plato was not the only writer that treated of a world beyond the pillars of Hercules, and as the ocean is still shallow and grows sea‐ weed all through the tropical part of the Atlantic, it is not wild to imagine that this continent projected, or that there was an island‐world on that coast. The Pacific also shows signs of having been a populous island‐empire of Malays or Javanese — if not a continent amid the North and South. We know that Lemuria in the Indian Ocean is a dream of scientists; and that the Sahara and the middle belt of Asia were perhaps once sea‐beds.ʺ

ATLANTIS AND ITS PEOPLES

To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of hierophants was divided into two distinct categories: those who were instructed by the ʺSons of God,ʺ of the island, and who were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation, and others who inhabited the lost Atlantis — if such must be its name — and who, being of another race, were born with a sight which embraced all hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material obstacle. In short, they were the fourth race of men mentioned in the Popol‐Vuh, whose sight was unlimited and who knew all things at once.

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They were, perhaps, what we would now term ʺnatural‐born mediums,ʺ who neither struggled nor suffered to obtain their knowledge, nor did they acquire it at the price of any sacrifice. Therefore, while the former walked in the path of their divine instructors, and acquiring their knowledge by degrees, learned at the same time to discern the evil from the good, the born adepts of the Atlantis blindly followed the insinuations of the great and invisible ʺDragon,ʺ the King Thevetat (the Serpent of Genesis?). Thevetat had neither learned nor acquired knowledge, but, to borrow an expression of Dr. Wilder in relation to the tempting Serpent, he was ʺa sort of Socrates who knew without being initiated.ʺ Thus, under the evil insinuations of their demon, Thevetat, the Atlantis‐race became a nation of wicked magicians. In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the submersion of the Atlantis; which finds its imitation in the stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood: The giants and magicians ʺ . . . and all flesh died . . . and every man.ʺ All except Xisuthrus and Noah, who are substantially identical with the great Father of the Thlinkithians in the Popol‐Vuh, or the sacred book of the Guatemaleans, which also tells of his escaping in a large boat, like the Hindu Noah — Vaiswasvata.

If we believe the tradition at all, we have to credit the further story that from the intermarrying of the progeny of

the hierophants of the island and the descendants of the Atlantian Noah, sprang up a mixed race of righteous and wicked. On the one side the world had its Enochs, Moseses, Gautama‐Buddhas, its numerous ʺSaviours,ʺ and great hierophants; on the other hand, its ʺnatural magiciansʺ who, through lack of the restraining power of proper spiritual enlightenment, and because of weakness of physical and mental organizations, unintentionally perverted their gifts to evil purposes. Moses had no word of rebuke for those adepts in prophecy and other powers who had been instructed in the colleges of esoteric wisdom* mentioned in the Bible. His denunciations were reserved for such as either wittingly or otherwise debased the powers inherited from their Atlantian ancestors to the service of evil spirits, to the injury of humanity. His wrath was kindled against the spirit of Ob, not that of OD.∴

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∴As we are going to press with this chapter, we have received from Paris, through the kindness of the Honorable John L. OʹSullivan, the complete works of Louis Jacolliot in twenty‐one volumes. They are chiefly upon India and its old traditions, philosophy, and religion. This indefatigable writer has collected a world of information from various sources, mostly authentic. While we do not accept his personal views on many points, still we freely acknowledge the extreme value of his copious translations from the Indian sacred

* 2 Kings, xxii. 14; 2 Chronicles, xxxiv. 22.

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books. The more so, since we find them corroborating in every respect the assertions we have made. Among other instances is this matter of the submergence of continents in prehistoric days. In his ʺHistoire des Vierges: Les Peuples et les Continents Disparus,ʺ he says: ʺOne of the most ancient legends of India, preserved in the temples by oral and written tradition, relates that several hundred thousand years ago there existed in the Pacific Ocean, an immense continent which was destroyed by geological upheaval, and the fragments of which must be sought in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the principal isles of Polynesia. ʺThe high plateaux of Hindustan and Asia, according to this hypothesis, would only have been represented in those distant epochs by great islands contiguous to the central continent. . . . According to the Brahmans this country had attained a high civilization, and the peninsula of Hindustan, enlarged by the displacement of the waters, at the time of the grand cataclysm, has but continued the chain of the primitive traditions born in this place. These traditions give the name of Rutas to the peoples which inhabited this immense equinoctial continent, and from their speech was derived the Sanscrit.ʺ (We will have something to say of this language in our second volume.) ʺThe Indo‐Hellenic tradition, preserved by the most intelligent population which emigrated from the plains of India, equally relates the existence of a continent and a people to which it gives the name of Atlantis and Atlantides, and which it locates in the Atlantic in the northern portion of the Tropics. ʺApart from the fact that the

supposition of an ancient continent in those latitudes, the vestiges of which may be found in the volcanic islands and mountainous surface of the Azores, the Canaries and Cape Verd, is not devoid of geographical probability, the Greeks, who, moreover, never dared to pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, on account of their dread of the mysterious ocean, appeared too late in antiquity for the stories preserved by Plato to be anything else than an echo of the Indian legend. Moreover, when we cast a look on a planisphere, at the sight of the islands and islets strewn from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia, from the straits of Sund to Easter Island, it is impossible, upon the hypothesis of continents preceding those which we inhabit, not to place there the most important of all. ʺA religious belief, common to Malacca and Polynesia, that is to say to the two opposite extremes of the Oceanic world, affirms ʹthat all these islands once formed two immense countries, inhabited by yellow men and black men, always at war; and that the gods, wearied with their quarrels, having charged Ocean to pacify them, the latter swallowed up the two continents, and since, it had been impossible to make him give up his captives. Alone, the mountain‐peaks and high plateaux escaped the flood, by the power of the gods, who perceived too late the mistake they had committed.ʹ ʺWhatever there may be in these traditions, and whatever may have been the place where a civilization more ancient than that of Rome, of Greece, of Egypt, and of India was developed, it is certain that this civilization did exist, and that it is highly important for science to recover its traces,

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however feeble and fugitive they may beʺ (pp. 13‐15). This last tradition, translated by Louis Jacolliot from the Sanscrit manuscripts, corroborates the one we have given from the ʺRecords of the Secret Doctrine.ʺ The war mentioned between the yellow and the black men, relates to a struggle between the ʺsons of Godʺ and the ʺsons of giants,ʺ or the inhabitants and magicians of the Atlantis. The final conclusion of M. Jacolliot, who visited personally all the islands of Polynesia, and devoted years to the study of the religion, language, and traditions of nearly all the peoples, is as follows: ʺAs to the Polynesian continent which disappeared at the time of the final geological cataclysms, its existence rests on such proofs that to be logical we can doubt no longer. ʺThe three summits of this continent, Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, are distant from each other from fifteen to eighteen hundred leagues, and the groups of intermediate islands, Viti, Samoa, Tonga, Foutouna, Ouvea, Marquesas, Tahiti, Pournouton, Gambiers, are themselves distant from these extreme points from seven or eight hundred to one thousand leagues. ʺAll navigators agree in saying that the extreme and the central groups could never have communicated in view of their actual geographical position, and with the insufficient means they had at hand. It is physically impossible to cross such distances in a pirogue . . . without a compass, and travel months without provisions. ʺOn the other hand, the aborigines of the Sandwich Islands, of Viti, of New Zealand, of the central groups, of Samoa, Tahiti, etc., had never known each other, had never heard of each other before the arrival of the

Europeans. And yet, each of these people maintained that their island had at one time formed a part of an immense stretch of land which extended toward the West, on the side of Asia. And all, brought together, were found to speak the same language, to have the same usages, the same customs, the same religious belief. And all to the question, ʹWhere is the cradle of your race?ʹ for sole response, extended their hand toward the setting sunʺ (Ibid., p. 308).

The ruins which cover both Americas, and are found on many West Indian islands, are all attributed to the submerged Atlantians. As well as the hierophants of the old world, which in the days of Atlantis was almost connected with the new one by land, the magicians of the now submerged country had a net‐work of subterranean passages running in all directions. In connection with those mysterious catacombs we will now give a curious story told to us by a Peruvian, long since dead, as we were travelling together in the interior of his country. There must be truth in it; as it was afterward confirmed to us by an Italian gentleman who had seen the place and who, but for lack of means and time, would have verified the tale himself, at least partially. The informant of the Italian was an old priest, who had had the secret divulged to him, at confession, by a Peruvian Indian. We may add, moreover, that the priest was compelled to make the revelation, being at the time completely under the mesmeric influence of the traveller.

The story concerns the famous treasures of the last of the Incas. The Peruvian asserted that since the well‐known and

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miserable murder of the latter by Pizarro, the secret had been known to all the Indians, except the Mestizos who could not be trusted. It runs thus: The Inca was made prisoner, and his wife offered for his liberation a room full of gold, ʺfrom the floor up to the ceiling, as high up as his conqueror could reachʺ before the sun would set on the third day. She kept her promise, but Pizarro broke his word, according to Spanish practice. Marvelling at the exhibition of such treasures, the conqueror declared that he would not release the prisoner, but would murder him, unless the queen revealed the place whence the treasure came. He had heard that the Incas had somewhere an inexhaustible mine; a subterranean road or tunnel running many miles under ground, where were kept the accumulated riches of the country. The unfortunate queen begged for delay, and went to consult the oracles. During the sacrifice, the chief‐priest showed her in the consecrated ʺblack mirrorʺ* the unavoidable murder of her husband, whether she delivered the treasures of the crown to Pizarro or not. Then the queen gave the order to close the entrance, which

* These ʺmagic mirrors,ʺ generally black, are another proof of the universality of an identical belief. In India these mirrors are prepared in the province of Agra and are also fabricated in Thibet and China. And we find them in Ancient Egypt, from whence, according to the native historian quoted by Brasseur de Bourbourg, the ancestors of the Quiches brought them to Mexico; the Peruvian sun‐worshippers also used it. When the Spaniards had landed, says the historian, the King of the Quiches, ordered his priests to consult the mirror, in order to learn the fate of his kingdom. ʺThe demon reflected the present and the future as in a mirror,ʺ he adds (De Bourbourg, ʺMexique,ʺ p. 184).

was a door cut in the rocky wall of a chasm. Under the direction of the priest and magicians, the chasm was accordingly filled to the top with huge masses of rock, and the surface covered over so as to conceal the work. The Inca was murdered by the Spaniards and his unhappy queen committed suicide. Spanish greed overreached itself and the secret of the buried treasures was locked in the breasts of a few faithful Peruvians.

Our Peruvian informant added that in consequence of certain indiscretions at various times, persons had been sent by different governments to search for the treasure under the pretext of scientific exploration. They had rummaged the country through, but without realizing their object. So far this tradition is corroborated by the reports of Dr. Tschuddi and other historians of Peru. But there are certain additional details which we are not aware have been made public before now.

PERUVIAN RELICS

Several years after hearing the story, and its corroboration by the Italian gentleman, we again visited Peru. Going southward from Lima, by water, we reached a point near Arica at sunset, and were struck by the appearance of an enormous rock, nearly perpendicular, which stood in mournful solitude on the shore, apart from the range of the Andes. It was the tomb of the Incas. As the last rays of the setting sun strike the face of the rock, one can make out, with

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an ordinary opera‐glass, some curious hieroglyphics inscribed on the volcanic surface.

When Cusco was the capital of Peru, it contained a temple of the sun, famed far and near for its magnificence. It was roofed with thick plates of gold, and the walls were covered with the same precious metal; the eave‐troughs were also of solid gold. In the west wall the architects had contrived an aperture in such a way that when the sunbeams reached it, it focused them inside the building. Stretching like a golden chain from one sparkling point to another, they encircled the walls, illuminating the grim idols, and disclosing certain mystic signs at other times invisible. It was only by understanding these hieroglyphics — identical with those which may be seen to this day on the tomb of the Incas — that one could learn the secret of the tunnel and its approaches. Among the latter was one in the neighborhood of Cusco, now masked beyond discovery. This leads directly into an immense tunnel which runs from Cusco to Lima, and then, turning southward, extends into Bolivia. At a certain point it is intersected by a royal tomb. Inside this sepulchral chamber are cunningly arranged two doors; or, rather, two enormous slabs which turn upon pivots, and close so tightly as to be only distinguishable from the other portions of the sculptured walls by the secret signs, whose key is in the possession of the faithful custodians. One of these turning slabs covers the southern mouth of the Liman tunnel — the other, the northern one of the Bolivian corridor. The latter, running southward, passes through Trapaca and Cobijo, for

Arica is not far away from the little river called Payʹquina,* which is the boundary between Peru and Bolivia.

Not far from this spot stand three separate peaks which form a curious triangle; they are included in the chain of the Andes. According to tradition the only practicable entrance to the corridor leading northward is in one of these peaks; but without the secret of its landmarks, a regiment of Titans might rend the rocks in vain in the attempt to find it. But even were some one to gain an entrance and find his way as far as the turning slab in the wall of the sepulchre, and attempt to blast it out, the superincumbent rocks are so disposed as to bury the tomb, its treasures, and — as the mysterious Peruvian expressed it to us — ʺa thousand warriorsʺ in one common ruin. There is no other access to the Arica chamber but through the door in the mountain near Payʹquina. Along the entire length of the corridor, from Bolivia to Lima and Cusco, are smaller hiding places filled with treasures of gold and precious stone, the accumulations of many generations of Incas, the aggregate value of which is incalculable.

We have in our possession an accurate plan of the tunnel, the sepulchre, and the doors, given to us at the time by the old Peruvian. If we had ever thought of profiting by the secret, it would have required the cooperation of the Peruvian and Bolivian governments on an extensive scale. To say

* Payʹquina, or Payaquina, so called because its waves used to drift particles of gold from the Brazil. We found a few specks of genuine metal in a handful of sand that we brought back to Europe.

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nothing of physical obstacles, no one individual or small party could undertake such an exploration without encountering the army of smugglers and brigands with which the coast is infested; and which, in fact, includes nearly the whole population. The mere task of purifying the mephitic air of the tunnel, which had not been entered for centuries, would also be a serious one. There, however, the treasure lies, and there the tradition says it will lie till the last vestige of Spanish rule disappears from the whole of North and South America.

The treasures exhumed by Dr. Schliemann at Mycenæ, have awakened popular cupidity, and the eyes of adventurous speculators are being turned toward the localities where the wealth of ancient peoples is supposed to be buried, in crypt or cave, or beneath sand or alluvial deposit. Around no other locality, not even Peru, hang so many traditions as around the Gobi Desert. In Independent Tartary this howling waste of shifting sand was once, if report speaks correctly, the seat of one of the richest empires the world ever saw. Beneath the surface are said to lie such wealth in gold, jewels, statuary, arms, utensils, and all that indicates civilization, luxury, and fine arts, as no existing capital of Christendom can show to‐day. The Gobi sand moves regularly from east to west before terrific gales that blow continually. Occasionally some of the hidden treasures are uncovered, but not a native dare touch them, for the whole district is under the ban of a mighty spell. Death would be the penalty. Bahti — hideous, but faithful gnomes

— guard the hidden treasures of this prehistoric people, awaiting the day when the revolution of cyclic periods shall again cause their story to be known for the instruction of mankind.

According to local tradition, the tomb of Ghengiz Khan still exists near Lake Tabasun Nor. Within lies the Mongolian Alexander, as though asleep. After three more centuries he will awake and lead his people to new victories and another harvest of glory. Though this prophetic tradition be received with ever so many grains of salt, we can affirm as a fact that the tomb itself is no fiction, nor has its amazing richness been exaggerated.

THE GOBI DESERT AND ITS SECRETS

The district of the Gobi wilderness and, in fact, the whole area of Independent Tartary and Thibet is jealously guarded against foreign intrusion. Those who are permitted to traverse it are under the particular care and pilotage of certain agents of the chief authority, and are in duty bound to convey no intelligence respecting places and persons to the outside world. But for this restriction, even we might contribute to these pages accounts of exploration, adventure, and discovery that would be read with interest. The time will come, sooner or later, when the dreadful sand of the desert will yield up its long‐buried secrets, and then there will indeed be unlooked‐for mortifications for our modern vanity.

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ʺThe people of Pashai,ʺ* says Marco Polo, the daring traveller of the thirteenth century, ʺare great adepts in sorceries and the diabolic arts.ʺ And his learned editor adds: ʺThis Pashai, or Udyana, was the native country of Padma Sambhava, one of the chief apostles of lamaism, i.e., of Thibetan Buddhism, and a great master of enchantments. The doctrines of Sakya, as they prevailed in Udyana in old times, were probably strongly tinged with Sivaitic magic, and the Thibetans still regard the locality as the classic ground of sorcery and witchcraft.ʺ

The ʺold timesʺ are just like the ʺmodern timesʺ; nothing is changed as to magical practices except that they have become still more esoteric and arcane, and that the caution of the adepts increases in proportion to the travellerʹs curiosity. Hiouen‐Thsang says of the inhabitants: ʺThe men . . . are fond of study, but pursue it with no ardor. The science of magical formulæ has become a regular professional business with them.ʺ†

We will not contradict the venerable Chinese pilgrim on this point, and are willing to admit that in the seventh century some people made ʺa professional businessʺ of magic; so, also, do some people now, but certainly not the true adepts. It is not Hiouen‐Thsang, the pious, courageous man, who risked his life a hundred times to have the bliss of perceiving Buddhaʹs shadow in the cave of Peshawer, who would have accused

* The regions somewhere about Udyana and Kashmere, as the translator and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel Yule), believes. Vol. i., p. 173.

the holy lamas and monkish thaumaturgists of ʺmaking a professional businessʺ of showing it to travellers. The injunction of Gautama, contained in his answer to King Prasenagit, his protector, who called on him to perform miracles, must have been ever present to the mind of Hiouen‐ Thsang. ʺGreat king,ʺ said Gautama, ʺI do not teach the law to my pupils, telling them ʹgo, ye saints, and before the eyes of the Brahmans and householders perform, by means of your supernatural powers, miracles greater than any man can perform.ʹ I tell them, when I teach them the law, ʹLive, ye saints, hiding your good works, and showing your sins.ʹ ʺ

THIBETAN AND CHINESE LEGENDS

Struck with the accounts Of magical exhibitions witnessed and recorded by travellers of every age who had visited Tartary and Thibet, Colonel Yule comes to the conclusion that the natives must have had ʺat their command the whole encyclopædia of modern ʹSpiritualists.ʹ Duhalde mentions among their sorceries the art of producing by their invocations the figures of Laotsen‡ and their divinities in the air, and of making a pencil write answers to questions without anybody touching it.ʺ§

The former invocations pertain to religious mysteries of their sanctuaries; if done otherwise, or for the sake of gain,

‡ Lao‐tsi, the Chinese philosopher.

§ ʺThe Book of Ser Marco Polo,ʺ vol. i., p. 318. See also, in this connection, the experiments of Mr. Crookes, described in chapter vi. of this work.

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they are considered sorcery, necromancy, and strictly forbidden. The latter art, that of making a pencil write without contact, was known and practiced in China and other countries centuries before the Christian era. It is the A B C of magic in those countries.

When Hiouen‐Thsang desired to adore the shadow of Buddha, it was not to ʺprofessional magiciansʺ that he resorted, but to the power of his own soul‐invocation; the power of prayer, faith, and contemplation. All was dark and dreary near the cavern in which the miracle was alleged to take place sometimes. Hiouen‐Thsang entered and began his devotions. He made 100 salutations, but neither saw nor heard anything. Then, thinking himself too sinful, he cried bitterly, and despaired. But as he was going to give up all hope, he perceived on the eastern wall a feeble light, but it disappeared. He renewed his prayers, full of hope this time, and again he saw the light, which flashed and disappeared again. After this he made a solemn vow: he would not leave the cave till he had the rapture to see at last the shadow of the ʺVenerable of the Age.ʺ He had to wait longer after this, for only after 200 prayers was the dark cave suddenly ʺbathed in light, and the shadow of Buddha, of a brilliant white color, rose majestically on the wall, as when the clouds suddenly open, and, all at once, display the marvellous image of the ʹMountain of Light.ʹ A dazzling splendor lighted up the features of the divine countenance. Hiouen‐Thsang was lost in contemplation and wonder, and would not turn his eyes away from the sublime and incomparable object.ʺ Hiouen‐

Thsang adds in his own diary, See‐yu‐kee, that it is only when man prays with sincere faith, and if he has received from above a hidden impression, that he sees the shadow clearly, but he cannot enjoy the sight for any length of time.*

Those who are so ready to accuse the Chinese of irreligion will do well to read Schottʹs Essays on Buddhism in China and Upper Asia.† ʺIn the years Yuan‐yeu of the Sung (A.D. 1086‐ 1093) a pious matron with her two servants lived entirely to the Land of Enlightenment. One of the maids said one day to her companion: ʹTo‐night I shall pass over to the Realm of Amitaʹ (Buddha). The same night a balsamic odor filled the house, and the maid died without any preceding illness. On the following day the surviving maid said to her lady: ʹYesterday my deceased companion appeared to me in a dream, and said: ʺThanks to the persevering supplications of our dear mistress, I am become an inhabitant of Paradise, and my blessedness is past all expression in words.ʺ ʹ The matron replied: ʹIf she will appear to me also, then will I believe all you say.ʹ The next night the deceased really appeared to her. The lady asked: ʹMay I, for once, visit the Land of Enlightenment?ʹ ʹYea,ʹ answered the blessed soul; ʹthou hast but to follow thine hand‐maiden.ʹ The lady followed her (in her dream), and soon perceived a lake of immeasurable expanse, overspread with innumerable red and white lotus flowers, of various sizes, some blooming, some fading. She asked what those flowers might signify? The maiden replied:

* Max Müller, ʺBuddhist Pilgrims.ʺ

† Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1846.

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ʹThese are all human beings on the Earth whose thoughts are turned to the Land of Enlightenment. The very first longing after the Paradise of Amita produces a flower in the Celestial Lake, and this becomes daily larger and more glorious as the self‐improvement of the person whom it represents advances; in the contrary case, it loses in glory and fades away.ʹ* The matron desired to know the name of an enlightened one who reposed on one of the flowers, clad in a waving and wondrously glistening raiment. Her whilom maiden answered: ʹThat is Yang‐kie.ʹ Then asked she the name of another, and was answered:

ʹThat is Mahu.ʹ The lady then said: ʹAt what place shall I hereafter come into existence?ʹ Then the Blessed Soul led her a space further, and showed her a hill that gleamed with gold and azure. ʹHere,ʹ said she, ʹis your future abode. You will belong to the first order of the blessed.ʹ When the matron awoke, she sent to inquire for Yang‐kie and Mahu. The first was already departed; the other still alive and well. And thus

* Colonel Yule makes a remark in relation to the above Chinese mysticism which for its noble fairness we quote most willingly. ʺIn 1871,ʺ he says, ʺI saw in Bond street an exhibition of the (so‐called) ʹspiritʹ drawings, i.e., drawings executed by a ʹmediumʹ under extraneous and invisible guidance. A number of these extraordinary productions (for extraordinary they were undoubtedly) professed to represent the ʹSpiritual Flowersʹ of such and such persons; and the explanation of these as presented in the catalogue was in substance exactly that given in the text. It is highly improbable that the artist had any cognizance of Schottʹs Essays, and the coincidence was certainly very strikingʺ (ʺThe Book of Ser Marco Polo,ʺ vol. i., p. 444).

the lady learned that the soul of one who advances in holiness and never turns back, may be already a dweller in the Land of Enlightenment, even though the body still sojourn in this transitory world.ʺ

In the same essay, another Chinese story is translated, and to the same effect: ʺI knew a man,ʺ says the author, ʺwho during his life had killed many living beings, and was at last struck with an apoplexy. The sorrows in store for his sin‐ laden soul pained me to the heart; I visited him, and exhorted him to call on the Amita; but he obstinately refused. His illness clouded his understanding; in consequence of his misdeeds he had become hardened. What was before such a man when once his eyes were closed? In this life the night followeth the day, and the winter followeth the summer; that, all men are aware of. But that life is followed by death, no man will consider. Oh, what blindness and obduracy is this!ʺ (p. 93.)

These two instances of Chinese literature hardly strengthen the usual charge of irreligion and total materialism brought against the nation. The first little mystical story is full of spiritual charm, and would grace any Christian religious book. The second is as worthy of praise, and we have but to replace ʺAmitaʺ with ʺJesusʺ to have a highly Orthodox tale, as regards religious sentiments and code of philosophical morality. The following instance is still more striking, and we quote it for the benefit of Christian revivalists: ʺHoang‐ta‐tie, of Tʹanchen, who lived under the Sung, followed the craft of a blacksmith. Whenever he was at

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his work he used to call, without intermission, on the name of Amita Buddha. One day he handed to his neighbors the following verses of his own composition to be spread about:—

ʹDing dong! The hammer‐strokes fall long and fast, Until the iron turns to steel at last!

Now shall the long, long day of rest begin, The Land of Bliss Eternal calls me in!ʹ

ʺThereupon he died. But his verses spread all over Honan, and many learned to call upon Buddha.ʺ* To deny to the Chinese or any people of Asia, whether Central, Upper, or Lower, the possession of any knowledge, or even perception of spiritual things, is perfectly ridiculous. From one end to the other the country is full of mystics, religious philosophers, Buddhist saints, and magicians. Belief in a spiritual world, full of invisible beings who, on certain occasions, appear to mortals objectively, is universal. ʺAccording to the belief of the nations of Central Asia,ʺ remarks I. J. Schmidt, ʺthe earth and its interior, as well as the encompassing atmosphere, are filled with spiritual beings, which exercise an influence, partly beneficent, partly malignant, on the whole of organic and inorganic nature. . . . Especially are deserts and other wild or uninhabited tracts, or regions in which the influences of nature are displayed on a gigantic and terrible scale, regarded as the chief abode or rendezvous of evil spirits. And hence the steppes of Turan, and in particular the great sandy

Desert of Gobi have been looked on as the dwelling‐place of malignant beings, from days of hoary antiquity.ʺ

Marco Polo — as a matter of course — mentions more than once in his curious book of Travels, these tricky nature‐ spirits of the deserts. For centuries, and especially in the last one, had his strange stories been completely rejected. No one would believe him when he said he had witnessed, time and again, with his own eyes, the most wonderful feats of magic performed by the subjects of Kublai‐Khan and adepts of other countries. On his death‐bed Marco was strongly urged to retract his alleged ʺfalsehoodsʺ; but he solemnly swore to the truth of what he said, adding that ʺhe had not told one‐half of what he had really seen!ʺ There is now no doubt that he spoke the truth, since Marsdenʹs edition, and that of Colonel Yule have appeared. The public is especially beholden to the latter for bringing forward so many authorities corroborative of Marcoʹs testimony, and explaining some of the phenomena in the usual way, for he makes it plain beyond question that the great traveller was not only a veracious but an exceedingly observant writer. Warmly defending his author, the conscientious editor, after enumerating more than one hitherto controverted and even rejected point in the Venetianʹs Travels, concludes by saying: ʺNay, the last two years have thrown a promise of light even on what seemed the wildest of Marcoʹs stories, and the bones of a veritable RUC

* Schott, ʺEssay on Buddhism,ʺ p. 103.

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from New Zealand lie on the table of Professor Owenʹs cabinet!ʺ*

The monstrous bird of the Arabian Nights, or ʺArabian Mythology,ʺ as Webster calls the Ruc (or Roc), having been identified, the next thing in order is to discover and recognize that Aladdinʹs magical lamp has also certain claims to reality.

Describing his passage through the great desert of Lop, Marco Polo speaks of a marvellous thing, ʺwhich is that, when travellers are on the move by night . . . they will hear spirits talking. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name . . .

even in the daytime one hears these spirits talking. And sometimes you shall hear the sound of a variety of musical instruments, and still more commonly the sound of drums.ʺ†

In his notes, the translator quotes the Chinese historian, Matwanlin, who corroborates the same. ʺDuring the passage of this wilderness you hear sounds,ʺ says Matwanlin, ʺsometimes of singing, sometimes of wailing; and it has often happened that travellers going aside to see what those sounds might be, have strayed from their course and been entirely lost; for they were voices of spirits and goblins.ʺ‡ ʺThese goblins are not peculiar to the Gobi,ʺ adds the editor, ʺthough that appears to have been their most favored haunt.

* ʺThe Book of Ser Marco Polo,ʺ vol. i., Preface to the second edition, p. viii.

† Ibid., vol. i., p. 203.

‡ ʺVisdelon,ʺ p. 130.

The awe of the vast and solitary desert raises them in all similar localities.ʺ

Colonel Yule would have done well to consider the possibility of serious consequences arising from the acceptance of his theory. If we admit that the weird cries of the Gobi are due to the awe inspired ʺby the vast and solitary desert,ʺ why should the goblins of the Gadarenes (Luke viii. 29) be entitled to any better consideration? and why may not Jesus have been self‐deceived as to his objective tempter during the forty daysʹ trial in the ʺwildernessʺ? We are quite ready to receive or reject the theory enunciated by Colonel Yule, but shall insist upon its impartial application to all cases. Pliny speaks of the phantoms that appear and vanish in the deserts of Africa;§ Æthicus, the early Christian cosmographer, mentions, though incredulous, the stories that were told of the voices of singers and revellers in the desert; and ʺMasʹudi tells of the ghûls, which in the deserts appear to travellers by night and in lonely hoursʺ; and also of ʺApollonius of Tyana and his companions, who, in a desert near the Indus by moonlight, saw an empusa or ghul taking many forms. . . . They revile it, and it goes off uttering shrill cries.ʺ** And Ibn Batuta relates a like legend of the Western Sahara: ʺIf the messenger be solitary, the demons sport with him and fascinate him, so that he strays from his course and perishes.ʺ†† Now if all these matters are capable of a ʺrational

explanation,ʺ and we do not doubt it as regards most of these cases, then, the Bible‐devils of the wilderness deserve no more consideration, but should have the same rule applied to them. They, too, are creatures of terror, imagination, and superstition; hence, the narratives of the Bible must be false; and if one single verse is false, then a cloud is thrown upon the title of all the rest to be considered divine revelation. Once admit this, and this collection of canonical documents is at least as amenable to criticism as any other book of stories.*

There are many spots in the world where the strangest phenomena have resulted from what was later ascertained to be natural physical causes. In Southern California there are certain places on the sea‐shore where the sand when disturbed produces a loud musical ring. It is known as the ʺmusical sand,ʺ and the phenomenon is supposed to be of an electrical nature. ʺThe sound of musical instruments, chiefly

* There are pious critics who deny the world the same right to judge the ʺBibleʺ on the testimony of deductive logic as ʺany other book.ʺ Even exact science must bow to this decree. In the concluding paragraph of an article devoted to a terrible onslaught on Baron Bunsenʹs ʺChronology,ʺ which does not quite agree with the ʺBible,ʺ a writer exclaims, ʺthe subject we have proposed to ourselves is completed. . . .

We have endeavored to meet Chevalier Bunsenʹs charges against the inspiration of the ʺBibleʺ on its own ground. . . . An inspired book . . .

never can, as an expression of its own teaching, or as a part of its own record, bear witness to any untrue or ignorant statement of fact, whether in history or doctrine. If it be untrue in its witness of one, who shall trust its truth in the witness of the other?ʺ (ʺThe Journal of Sacred Literature and Biblical Record,ʺ edited by the Rev. H. Burgess, Oct., 1859, p. 70.)

of drums, is a phenomenon of another class, and is really produced in certain situations among sandhills when the sand is disturbed,ʺ says the editor of Marco Polo. ʺA very striking account of a phenomenon of this kind, regarded as supernatural, is given by Friar Odoric, whose experience I have traced to the Reg Ruwan or flowing sand north of Kabul. Besides this celebrated example . . . I have noted that equally well‐known one of the Jibal Nakics, or ʹHill of the Bellʹ in the Sinai desert; . . . Gibalul‐Thabul, or hill of the drums. . .

. A Chinese narrative of the tenth century mentions the phenomenon as known near Kwachau, on the eastern border of the Lop desert, under the name of ʺthe singing sands.ʺ†

That all these are natural phenomena, no one can doubt. But what of the questions and answers, plainly and audibly given and received? What of conversations held between certain travellers and the invisible spirits, or unknown beings, that sometimes appear to whole caravans in tangible form? If so many millions believe in the possibility that spirits may clothe themselves with material bodies, behind the curtain of a ʺmedium,ʺ and appear to the circle, why should they reject the same possibility for the elemental spirits of the deserts? This is the ʺto be, or not to beʺ of Hamlet. If ʺspiritsʺ can do all that Spiritualists claim for them, why can they not appear equally to the traveller in the wildernesses and solitudes? A recent scientific article in a Russian journal attributes such ʺspirit‐voices,ʺ in the great Gobi desert, to the echo. A very

reasonable explanation, if it can only be demonstrated that these voices simply repeat what has been previously uttered by a living person. But when the ʺsuperstitiousʺ traveller gets intelligent answers to his questions, this Gobi echo at once shows a very near relationship with the famous echo of the Théâtre Porte St. Martin at Paris. ʺHow do you do, sir?ʺ shouts one of the actors in the play. ʺVery poorly, my son; thank you. I am getting old, very . . . very old!ʺ politely answers the echo!

What incredulous merriment must the superstitious and absurd narratives of Marco Polo, concerning the ʺsupernaturalʺ gifts of certain shark and wild‐beast charmers of India, whom he terms Abraiaman, have excited for long centuries. Describing the pearl‐fishery of Ceylon, as it was in his time, he says that the merchants are ʺobliged also to pay those men who charm the great fishes — to prevent them from injuring the divers whilst engaged in seeking pearls under water — one‐twentieth part of all that they take. These fish‐charmers are termed Abraiaman (Brahman?), and their charm holds good for that day only, for at night they dissolve the charm, so that the fishes can work mischief at their will. These Abraiaman know also how to charm beasts and birds, and every living thing.ʺ

And this is what we find in the explanatory notes of Colonel Yule, in relation to this degrading Asiatic ʺsuperstitionʺ: ʺMarcoʹs account of the pearl‐fishery is still substantially correct. . . . At the diamond mines of the northern Circars, Brahmans are employed in the analogous

office of propitiating the tutelary genii. The shark‐charmers are called in Tamil, Kadal‐Katti, ʹsea‐binders,ʹ and in Hindustani, Hai‐banda, or ʹshark‐binders.ʹ At Aripo they belong to one family, supposed to have the monopoly of the charm.* The chief operator is (or was, not many years ago) paid by the government, and he also received ten oysters from each boat daily during the fishery. Tennent, on his visit, found the incumbent of the office to be a Roman Catholic Christian (?), but that did not seem to affect the exercise of the validity of his functions. It is remarkable that not more than one authenticated accident from sharks had taken place during the whole period of the British occupation.ʺ†

Two items of fact in the above paragraph are worthy of being placed in juxtaposition. 1. The British authorities pay professional shark‐charmers a stipend to exercise their art; and, 2, only one life has been lost since the execution of the contract. (We have yet to learn whether the loss of this one life did not occur under the Roman Catholic sorcerer.) Is it pretended that the salary is paid as a concession to a degrading native superstition? Very well; but how about the sharks? Are they receiving salaries, also, from the British authorities out of the Secret Service Fund? Every person who has visited Ceylon must know that the waters of the pearl coast swarm with sharks of the most voracious kind, and that it is even dangerous to bathe, let alone to dive for oysters. We might go further, if we chose, and give the names of British

* Like the Psylli, or serpent‐charmers of Libya, whose gift is hereditary.

† ʺSer Marco Polo,ʺ vol. ii., p. 321.

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officials of the highest rank in the Indian service, who, after resorting to native ʺmagiciansʺ and ʺsorcerers,ʺ to assist them in recovering things lost, or in unravelling vexatious mysteries of one kind or another, and being successful, and at the time secretly expressing their gratitude, have gone away, and shown their innate cowardice before the worldʹs Areopagus, by publicly denying the truth of magic, and leading the jest against Hindu ʺsuperstition.ʺ

Not many years ago, one of the worst of superstitions scientists held to be that of believing that the murdererʹs portrait remained impressed on the eye of the murdered person, and that the former could be easily recognized by examining carefully the retina. The ʺsuperstitionʺ asserted that the likeness could be made still more striking by subjecting the murdered man to certain old womenʹs fumigations, and the like gossip. And now an American newspaper, of March 26, 1877, says: ʺA number of years ago attention was attracted to a theory which insisted that the last effort of vision materialized itself and remained as an object imprinted on the retina of the eye after death. This has been proved a fact by an experiment tried in the presence of Dr. Gamgee, F. R. S., of Birmingham, England, and Prof. Bunsen, the subject being a living rabbit. The means taken to prove the merits of the question were most simple, the eyes being placed near an opening in a shutter, and retaining the shape of the same after the animal had been deprived of life.ʺ

If, from the regions of idolatry, ignorance, and superstition, as India is termed by some missionaries, we turn

to the so‐called centre of civilization — Paris, we find the same principles of magic exemplified there under the name of occult Spiritualism. The Honorable John L. OʹSullivan, Ex‐ Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Portugal, has kindly furnished us with the strange particulars of a semi‐ magical seance which he recently attended with several other eminent men, at Paris. Having his permission to that effect, we print his letter in full.

ʺNEW YORK, Feb. 7, 1877

ʺI cheerfully obey your request for a written statement of what I related to you orally, as having been witnessed by me in Paris, last summer, at the house of a highly respectable physician, whose name I have no authority to use, but whom, after the usual French fashion of anonymizing, I will call Dr. X. ʺI was introduced there by an English friend, well‐ known in the Spiritualist circles in London — Mr. Gledstanes. Some eight or ten other visitors were present, of both sexes. We were seated in fauteuils, occupying half of a long drawing‐room, flush with a spacious garden. In the other half of the room was a grand piano, a considerable open space between it and us, and a couple of fauteuils in that space, evidently placed there to be occupied by other sitters. A door near them opened into the private apartments. ʺDr. X. came in, and discoursed to us for about twenty minutes with rapid and vehement French eloquence, which I could not undertake to report. He had, for over twenty‐five years, investigated occult mysteries, of which he was about to exhibit some phenomena. His object was to attract his brethren of the scientific world, but few or none of

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them came to see for themselves. He intended before long to publish a book. He presently led in two ladies, the younger one his wife, the other (whom I will call Madame Y.) a medium or sensitive, with whom he had worked through all that period in the prosecution of these studies, and who had devoted and sacrificed her whole life to this work with him. Both these ladies had their eyes closed, apparently in trance. ʺHe stood them at the opposite ends of the long grand piano (which was shut), and directed them to put their hands upon it. Sounds soon began to issue from its chords, marching, galloping, drums, trumpets, rolling musketry, cannon, cries, and groans — in one word, a battle. This lasted, I should say, some five to ten minutes. ʺI should have mentioned that before the two mediums were brought in I had written in pencil, on a small bit of paper (by direction of Mr. Gledstanes, who had been there before), the names of three objects, to be known to myself alone, viz., some musical composer, deceased, a flower, and a cake. I chose Beethoven, a

Marguerite (daisy), and a kind of French cake called plombieres, and rolled the paper into a pellet, which I kept in my hand, without letting even my friend know its contents. ʺWhen the battle was over, he placed Mme. Y. in one of the two fauteuils, Mme. X. being seated apart at one side of the room, and I was asked to hand my folded, or rolled, paper to Mme. Y. She held it (unopened) between her fingers, on her lap. She was dressed in white merino, flowing from her neck and gathered in at the waist, under a blaze of light from chandeliers on the right and left. After a while she dropped the little roll of paper to the floor, and I picked it up. Dr. X. then raised her to her feet and told her to make ʺthe

evocation of the dead.ʺ He withdrew the fauteuils and placed in her hand a steel rod of about four and half or five feet in length, the top of which was surmounted with a short cross‐ piece — the Egyptian Tau. With this she traced a circle round herself, as she stood, of about six feet in diameter. She did not hold the cross‐piece as a handle, but, on the contrary, she held the rod at the opposite end. She presently handed it back to Dr. X. There she stood for some time, her hands hanging down and folded together in front of her, motionless, and with her eyes directed slightly upward toward one of the opposite corners of the long salon. Her lips presently began to move, with muttered sounds, which after a while became distinct in articulation, in short broken sentences or phrases, very much like the recitation of a litany. Certain words, seeming to be names, would recur from time to time. It sounded to me somewhat as I have heard Oriental languages sound. Her face was very earnest and mobile with expression, with sometimes a slight frown on the brow. I suppose it lasted about fifteen or twenty minutes, amidst the motionless silence of all the company, as we gazed on the weird scene. Her utterance finally seemed to increase in vehemence and rapidity. At last she stretched forth one arm toward the space on which her eyes had been fixed, and, with a loud cry, almost a scream, she exclaimed: ʹBEETHOVEN!ʹ — and fell backward, prostrate on the floor.

ʺDr. X. hastened to her, made eager magnetic passes about her face and neck, and propped up her head and shoulders on cushions. And there she lay like a person sick and suffering, occasionally moaning, turning restlessly, etc. I suppose a full half‐hour then elapsed, during which she

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seemed to pass through all the phases of gradual death (this I was told was a re‐enacting of the death of Beethoven). It would be long to describe in detail, even if I could recall all. We watched as though assisting at a scene of real death. I will only say that her pulse ceased; no beating of the heart could be perceived; her hands first, then her arms became cold, while warmth was still to be felt under her arm‐pits; even they at last became entirely cold; her feet and legs became cold in the same manner, and they swelled astonishingly. The doctor invited us all to come and recognize these phenomena. The gasping breaths came at longer and longer intervals, and feebler and feebler. At last came the end; her head fell sidewise, her hands, which had been picking with the fingers about her dress, collapsed also. The doctor said, ʹshe is now deadʹ; and so it indeed seemed. In vehement haste he produced (I did not see from where) two small snakes, which he seemed to huddle about her neck and down into her bosom, making also eager transverse passes about her head and neck. After a while she appeared to revive slowly, and finally the doctor and a couple of men servants lifted her up and carried her off into the private apartments, from which he soon returned. He told us that this was all very critical, but perfectly safe, but that no time was to be lost, for otherwise the death, which he said was real, would be permanent.

ʺI need not say how ghastly the effect of this whole scene had been on all the spectators. Nor need I remind you that this was no trickery of a performer paid to astonish. The scene passed in the elegant drawing‐room of a respectable physician, to which access without introduction is

impossible, while (outside of the phenomenal facts) a thousand indescribable details of language, manner, expression, and action presented those minute guarantees of sincerity and earnestness which carry conviction to those who witness, though it may be transmitted to those who only hear or read of them.

ʺAfter a time Mme. Y. returned and was seated in one of the two fauteuils before mentioned, and I was invited to the other by her side. I had still in my hand the unopened pellet of paper containing the three words privately written by me, of which (Beethoven) had been the first. She sat for a few minutes with her open hands resting on her lap. They presently began to move restlessly about. ʺAh, it burns, it burns,ʺ she said, and her features contracted with an expression of pain. In a few moments she raised one of them, and it contained a marguerite, the flower I had written as my second word. I received it from her, and after it had been examined by the rest of the company, I preserved it. Dr. X. said it was of a species not known in that part of the country; an opinion in which he was certainly mistaken, as a few days afterwards I saw the same in the flower‐market of the Madeleine. Whether this flower was produced under her hands, or was simply an apport, as in the phenomenon we are familiar with in the experiences of Spiritualism, I do not know. It was the one or the other, for she certainly did not have it as she sat there by my side, under a strong light, before it made its appearance. The flower was perfectly fresh in every one of its delicate petals.

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ʺThe third word I had written on my bit of paper was the name of a cake — plombières. She presently began to go through the motions of eating, though no cake was visible, and asked me if I would not go with her to Plombières — the name of the cake I had written. This might have been simply a case of mind‐reading. ʺAfter this followed a scene in which Madame X., the doctorʹs wife, was said, and seemed to be, possessed by the spirit of Beethoven. The doctor addressed her as ʺMonsieur Beethoven.ʺ She took no notice until he called the name aloud in her ear. She then responded with polite bows, etc. (You may remember that Beethoven was extremely deaf.) After some conversation he begged her to play, and she seated herself at the piano and performed magnificently both some of his known music and some improvisations which were generally recognized by the company as in his style. I was told afterwards, by a lady friend of Madame X., that in her normal state she was a very ordinary amateur performer. After about half an hour spent in music and in dialogue in the character of Beethoven, to whom her face in expression, and her tumbled hair, seemed to acquire a strange resemblance, the doctor placed in her hands a sheet of paper and a crayon, and asked her to sketch the face of the person she saw before her. She produced very rapidly a profile sketch of a head and face resembling Beethovenʹs busts, though as a younger man; and she dashed off a rapid name under it, as though a signature, ʹBeethoven.ʹ I have preserved the sketch, though how the handwriting may correspond with Beethovenʹs signature I cannot say. ʺThe hour was now late, and the company broke up; nor had I any time to interrogate Dr. X. upon what we

had thus witnessed. But I called on him with Mr. Gledstanes a few evenings afterwards. I found that he admitted the action of spirits, and was a Spiritualist, but also a great deal more, having studied long and deeply into the occult mysteries of the Orient. So I understood him to convey, while he seemed to prefer to refer me to his book, which he would probably publish in the course of the present year. I observed a number of loose sheets on a table all covered with Oriental characters unknown to me — the work of Madame Y. in trance, as he said, in answer to an inquiry. He told us that in the scene I had witnessed, she became (i.e., as I presumed, was possessed by) a priestess of one of the ancient Egyptian temples, and that the origin of it was this: A scientific friend of his had acquired in Egypt possession of the mummy of a priestess, and had given him some of the linen swathings with which the body was enveloped, and from the contact with this cloth of 2,000 or 3,000 years old, the devotion of her whole existence to this occult relation, and twenty years seclusion from the world, his medium, as sensitive Madame Y., had become what I had seen. The language I had heard her speak was the sacred language of the temples in which she had been instructed, not so much by inspiration but very much as we now study languages, by dictation, written exercises, etc., being even chided and punished when she was dull or slow. He said that Jacolliot had heard her in a similar scene, and recognized sounds and words of the very oldest sacred language as preserved in the temples of India, anterior, if I remember right, to the epoch of the Sanscrit.

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ʺRespecting the snakes he had employed in the hasty operation of restoring her to life, or rather perhaps arresting the last consummation of the process of death, he said there was a strange mystery in their relation to the phenomena of life and death. I understood that they were indispensable. Silence and inaction on our part were also insisted upon throughout, and any attempt at questioning him at the time was peremptorily, almost angrily, suppressed. We might come and talk afterward, or wait for the appearance of his book, but he alone seemed entitled to exercise the faculty of speech throughout all these performances — which he certainly did with great volubility, the while, with all the eloquence and precision of diction of a Frenchman, combining scientific culture with vividness of imagination. ʺI intended to return on some subsequent evening, but learned from Mr. Gledstanes that he had given them up for the present, disgusted with his ill‐success in getting his professional colleagues and men of science to come and witness what it was his object to show them.

ʺThis is about as much as I can recall of this strange, weird evening, excepting some uninteresting details. I have given you the name and address of Dr. X. confidentially, because he would seem to have gone more or less far on the same path as you pursue in the studies of your Theosophical Society. Beyond that I feel bound to keep it private, not having his authority to use it in any way which might lead to publicity.

In this interesting case simple Spiritualism has transcended its routine and encroached upon the limits of magic. The features of mediumship are there, in the double life led by the sensitive Madame Y., in which she passes an existence totally distinct from the normal one, and by reason of the subordination of her individuality to a foreign will, becomes the permutation of a priestess of Egypt; and in the personation of the spirit of Beethoven, and in the unconscious and cataleptic state into which she falls. On the other hand, the will‐power exercised by Dr. X. upon his sensitive, the tracing of the mystic circle, the evocations, the materialization of the desired flower, the seclusion and education of Madame Y., the employment of the wand and its form, the creation and use of the serpents, the evident control of the astral forces

— all these pertain to magic. Such experiments are of interest and value to science, but liable to abuse in the hands of a less conscientious practitioner than the eminent gentleman designated as Dr. X. A true Oriental kabalist would not recommend their duplication. Spheres unknown below our feet; spheres still more unknown and still more unexplored above us; between the two a handful of moles, blind to Godʹs great light, and deaf to the whispers of the invisible world, boasting that they lead mankind. Where? Onward, they claim; but we have a right to doubt it. The greatest of our physiologists, when placed side by side with a Hindu fakir, who knows neither how to read nor write, will very soon find himself feeling as foolish as a school‐boy who has neglected to learn his lesson. It is not by vivisecting living animals that

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a physiologist will assure himself of the existence of manʹs soul, nor on the blade of the knife can he extract it from a human body. ʺWhat sane man,ʺ inquires Sergeant Cox, the President of the London Psychological Society, ʺwhat sane man who knows nothing of magnetism or physiology, who had never witnessed an experiment nor learned its principles, would proclaim himself a fool by denying its facts and denouncing its theory?ʺ The truthful answer to this would be, ʺtwo‐thirds of our modern‐day scientists.ʺ The impertinence, if truth can ever be impertinent, must be laid at the door of him who uttered it — a scientist of the number of those few who are brave and honest enough to utter wholesome truths, however disagreeable. And there is no mistaking the real meaning of the imputation, for immediately after the irreverent inquiry, the learned lecturer remarks as pointedly: ʺThe chemist takes his electricity from the electrician, the physiologist looks to the geologist for his geology — each would deem it an impertinence in the other if he were to pronounce judgment in the branch of knowledge not his own. Strange it is, but true as strange, that this rational rule is wholly set at naught in the treatment of psychology. Physical scientists deem themselves competent to pronounce a dogmatic judgment upon psychology and all that appertains to it, without having witnessed any of its phenomena, and in entire ignorance of its principles and practice.ʺ*

We sincerely hope that the two eminent biologists, Mr. Mendeleyeff, of St. Petersburg, and Mr. Ray Lankester, of London fame, will bear themselves under the above as unflinchingly as their living victims do when palpitating under their dissecting knives.

For a belief to have become universal, it must have been founded on an immense accumulation of facts, tending to strengthen it, from one generation to another. At the head of all such beliefs stands magic, or, if one would prefer — occult psychology. Who, of those who appreciate its tremendous powers even from its feeble, half‐paralyzed effects in our civilized countries, would dare disbelieve in our days the assertions of Porphyry and Proclus, that even inanimate objects, such as statues of gods, could be made to move and exhibit a factitious life for a few moments? Who can deny the allegation? Is it those who testify daily over their own signatures that they have seen tables and chairs move and walk, and pencils write, without contact? Diogenes Laertius tells us of a certain philosopher, Stilpo, who was exiled from Athens by the Areopagus, for having dared to deny publicly that the Minerva of Pheidias was anything else than a block of marble. But our own age, after having mimicked the ancients in everything possible, even to their very names, such as ʺsenates,ʺ ʺprefects,ʺ and ʺconsuls,ʺ etc.; and after admitting that Napoleon the Great conquered three‐fourths of Europe by applying the principles of war taught by the Cæsars and the Alexanders, knows so much better than its

* ʺThe Spiritualist,ʺ London, Nov. 10, 1876.

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preceptors about psychology, that it would vote every believer in ʺanimated tablesʺ into Bedlam.

Be this as it may, the religion of the ancients is the religion of the future. A few centuries more, and there will linger no sectarian beliefs in either of the great religions of humanity. Brahmanism and Buddhism, Christianity and Mahometanism will all disappear before the mighty rush of facts. ʺI will pour out my spirit upon all flesh,ʺ writes the prophet Joel. ʺVerily I say unto you . . . greater works than these shall you do,ʺ promises Jesus. But this can only come to pass when the world returns to the grand religion of the past; the knowledge of those majestic systems which preceded, by far, Brahmanism, and even the primitive monotheism of the ancient Chaldeans. Meanwhile, we must remember the direct effects of the revealed mystery. The only means by which the wise priests of old could impress upon the grosser senses of the multitudes the idea of the Omnipotency of the Creative will or FIRST CAUSE; namely, the divine animation of inert matter, the soul infused into it by the potential will of man, the microcosmic image of the great Architect, and the transportation of ponderous objects through space and material obstacles.

Why should the pious Roman Catholic turn away in disgust at the ʺheathenʺ practices of the Hindu Tamil, for instance? We have witnessed the miracle of San Gennaro, in good old Naples, and we have seen the same in Nargercoil, in India. Where is the difference? The coagulated blood of the Catholic saint is made to boil and fume in its crystal bottle, to

the gratification of the lazzaroni; and from its jewelled shrine the martyrʹs idol beams radiant smiles and blessings at the Christian congregation. On the other hand, a ball of clay filled with water, is stuffed into the open breast of the god Suran; and while the padre shakes his bottle and produces his ʺmiracleʺ of blood, the Hindu priest plunges an arrow into the godʹs breast, and produces his ʺmiracle,ʺ for the blood gushes forth in streams, and the water is changed into blood. Both Christians and Hindus fall in raptures at the sight of such a miracle. So far, we do not see the slightest difference. But can it be that the Pagan learned the trick from San Gennaro?

ʺKnow, O, Asclepius,ʺ says Hermes, ʺthat as the HIGHEST ONE is the father of the celestial gods, so is man the artisan of the gods who reside in the temples, and who delight in the society of mortals. Faithful to its origin and nature, humanity perseveres in this imitation of the divine powers; and, if the Father Creator has made in His image the eternal gods, mankind in its turn makes its gods in its own image.ʺ ʺAnd, dost thou speak of statues of gods; O, Trismegistus?ʺ ʺVerily, I do, Asclepius, and however great thy defiance, perceivest thou not that these statues are endowed with reason, that they are animated with a soul, and that they can operate the greatest prodigies. How can we reject the evidence, when we find these gods possessing the gift of predicting the future, which they are compelled to tell, when forced to it by magic spells, as through the lips of the divines and their visions? . . .

It is the marvel of marvels that man could have invented and

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created gods. . . True, the faith of our ancestors has erred, and in their pride they fell into error as to the precise essence of these gods . . . but they have still found out that art themselves. Powerless to create soul and spirit, they evoke the souls of angels and demons in order to introduce them into the consecrated statues; and so make them preside at their Mysteries, by communicating to idols their own faculty to do good as well as evil.ʺ

It is not antiquity alone which is full of evidence that the statues and idols of the gods at times exhibited intelligence and locomotive powers. Full in the nineteenth century, we see the papers recording the capers played by the statue of the Madonna of Lourdes. This gracious lady, the French Notre Dame, runs away several times to the woods adjoining her usual residence, the parish church. The sexton is obliged to hunt after the runaway, and bring her home more than once.* After this begins a series of ʺmiracles,ʺ healing, prophesying, letter‐dropping from on high, and what not. These ʺmiraclesʺ are implicitly accepted by millions and millions of Roman Catholics; numbers of these belonging to the most intelligent and educated classes. Why, then, should we disbelieve in testimony of precisely the same character, given as to contemporary phenomena of the same kind, by the most accredited and esteemed historians — by Titus Livy, for instance? ʺJuno, would you please abandon the walls of Veii, and change this abode for that of Rome?ʺ inquires of the

* Read any of the papers, of the summer and autumn of 1876.

goddess a Roman soldier, after the conquest of that city. Juno consents, and nodding her head in token of acquiescence, her statue answers: ʺYes, I will.ʺ Furthermore, upon their carrying off the figure, it seems to instantly ʺlose its immense weight,ʺ adds the historian, and the statue seems rather to follow them than otherwise.†

With naivete, and a faith bordering on the sublime, des Mousseaux, bravely rushes into the dangerous parallels, and gives a number of instances of Christian as well as ʺheathenʺ miracles of that kind. He prints a list of such walking statues of saints and Madonnas, who lose their weight, and move about as so many living men and women; and presents unimpeachable evidence of the same, from classical authors, who described their miracles.‡ He has but one thought, one anxious and all‐overpowering desire — to prove to his readers that magic does exist, and that Christianity beats it flat. Not that the miracles of the latter are either more numerous, or more extraordinary, or suggestive than those of the Pagans. Not at all; and he is a fair historian as to facts and evidence. But, it is his arguments and reflections that are priceless: one kind of miracle is produced by God, the other by the Devil; he drags down the Deity and placing Him face to face with Satan, allows the arch‐enemy to beat the Creator by long odds. Not a word of solid, evident proof to show the substantial difference between the two kinds of wonders.

Would we inquire the reason why he traces in one the hand of God and in the other the horn and hoof of the Devil? Listen to the answer: ʺThe Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolical Church declares the miracles wrought by her faithful sons produced by the will of God; and all others the work of the spirits of Hell.ʺ Very well, but on what ground? We are shown an endless list of holy writers; of saints who fought during their whole lives with the fiends; and of fathers whose word and authority are accepted as ʺword of Godʺ by the same Church. ʺYour idols, your consecrated statues are the abode of demons,ʺ exclaims St. Cyprian. ʺYes, it is these spirits who inspire your divines, who animate the bowels of your victims, who govern the flight of birds, and who, mixing incessantly falsehood with truth, render oracles, and . . .

operate prodigies, their object being to bring you invincibly to their worship.ʺ*

Fanaticism in religion, fanaticism in science, or fanaticism in any other question becomes a hobby, and cannot but blind our senses. It will ever be useless to argue with a fanatic. And here we cannot help admiring once more the profound knowledge of human nature which dictated to Mr. Sergeant Cox the following words, delivered in the same address as before alluded to: ʺThere is no more fatal fallacy than that the truth will prevail by its own force, that it has only to be seen to be embraced. In fact the desire for the actual truth exists in very few minds, and the capacity to discern it in fewer still.

* ʺDe Idol. Vanit.,ʺ lib. I., p. 452.

When men say that they are seeking the truth, they mean that they are looking for evidence to support some prejudice or prepossession. Their beliefs are moulded to their wishes. They see all, and more than all, that seems to tell for that which they desire; they are blind as bats to whatever tells against them. The scientists are no more exempt from this common failing than are others.ʺ

We know that from the remotest ages there has existed a mysterious, awful science, under the name of theopœa. This science taught the art of endowing the various symbols of gods with temporary life and intelligence. Statues and blocks of inert matter became animated under the potential will of the hierophant. The fire stolen by Prometheus had fallen down in the struggle to earth; it embraced the lower regions of the sky, and settled in the waves of the universal ether as the potential Akâsa of the Hindu rites. We breathe and imbibe it into our organic system with every mouthful of fresh air. Our organism is full of it from the instant of our birth. But it becomes potential only under the influx of WILL and SPIRIT.

Left to itself, this life‐principle will blindly follow the laws of nature; and, according to conditions, will produce health and an exuberance of life, or cause death and dissolution. But, guided by the will of the adept, it becomes obedient; its currents restore the equilibrium in organic bodies, they fill the waste, and produce physical and psychological miracles, well‐known to mesmerizers. Infused in inorganic and inert matter, they create an appearance of life, hence motion. If to that life an individual intelligence, a personality, is wanting,

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then the operator must either send his scin‐lecca, his own astral spirit, to animate it; or use his power over the region of nature‐spirits to force one of them to infuse his entity into the marble, wood, or metal; or, again, be helped by human spirits. But the latter — except the vicious, earth‐bound class*

— will not infuse their essence into these inanimate objects. They leave the lower kinds to produce the similitude of life and animation, and only send their influence through the intervening spheres like a ray of divine light, when the so‐ called ʺmiracleʺ is required for a good purpose. The condition

— and this is a law in spiritual nature — is purity of motive, purity of the surrounding magnetic atmosphere, personal purity of the operator. Thus is it, that a Pagan ʺmiracleʺ may be by far holier than a Christian one.

Who that has seen the performance of the fakirs of Southern India, can doubt the existence of theopœa in ancient times? An inveterate skeptic, though more than anxious to attribute every phenomenon to jugglery, still finds himself compelled to testify to facts; and facts that are to be witnessed daily if one chooses. ʺI dare not,ʺ he says, speaking of Chibh‐

* These, after their bodily death, unable to soar higher, attached to terrestrial regions, delight in the society of the kind of elementals which by their affinity with vice attract them the most. They identify themselves with these to such a degree that they very soon lose sight of their own identity, and become a part of the elementals, the help of which they need to communicate with mortals. But as the nature‐spirits are not immortal, so the human elementaries who have lost their divine guide — spirit — can last no longer than the essence of the elements which compose their astral bodies holds together.

Chondor, a fakir of Jaffna‐patnam, ʺdescribe all the exercises which he performed. There are things one dares not say even after having witnessed them, for fear of being charged with having been under an inexplicable hallucination! And yet, ten, nay, twenty times, I saw and saw again the fakir obtain similar results over inert matter. . . It was but childʹs play for our ʹcharmerʹ to make the flame of candles which had, by his directions, been placed in the remotest corners of the apartment, pale and become extinguished at will; to cause the furniture to move, even the sofas on which we sat, the doors to open and shut repeatedly: and all this without quitting the mat upon which he sat on the floor.

THE MAGICIAN AIDS, Not IMPEDES, NATURE

ʺPerhaps I will be told that I saw imperfectly. Possibly; but I will say that hundreds and thousands of persons have seen and do see what I have, and things more wonderful; has one of all these discovered the secret, or been able to duplicate these phenomena? And I can never repeat too often that all this does not occur on a stage, supplied with mechanical contrivances for the use of the operator. No, it is a beggar crouched, naked, on the floor, who thus sports with your intelligence, your senses, and all that which we have agreed among ourselves to style the immutable laws of nature, but which he appears to alter at will!

ʺDoes he change its course? ʹNo, but he makes it act by using forces which are yet unknown to us,ʹ say the believers. However that may be, I have found myself twenty times at

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similar performances in company with the most distinguished men of British India — professors, physicians, officers. Not one of them but thus summarized his impressions upon quitting the drawing‐room. ʹThis is something terrifying to human intelligence!ʹ Every time that I saw repeated by a fakir the experiment of reducing serpents to a cataleptic state, a condition in which these animals have all the rigidity of the dry branch of a tree, my thoughts have reverted to the biblical fable (?) which endows Moses and the priests of Pharaoh with the like power.ʺ*

Assuredly, the flesh of man, beast, and bird should be as easily endowed with magnetic life‐principle as the inert table of a modern medium. Either both wonders are possible and true, or both must fall to the ground, together with the miracles of Apostolic days, and those of the more modern Popish Church. As for vital proofs furnished to us in favor of such possibilities, we might name books enough to fill a whole library. If Sixtus V. cited a formidable array of spirits attached to various talismans, was not his threat of excommunication for all those who practiced the art, uttered merely because he would have the knowledge of this secret confined within the precincts of the Church? How would it do for his ʺdivineʺ miracles to be studied and successfully reproduced by every man endowed with perseverance, a strong positive magnetic power, and an unflinching will? Recent events at Lourdes (of course, supposing them to have

* L. Jacolliot, ʺVoyage au Pays des Perles.ʺ

been truthfully reported) prove that the secret is not wholly lost; and if there is no strong magician‐mesmerizer concealed under frock and surplice, then the statue of Notre‐Dame is moved by the same forces which move every magnetized table at a spiritual seance; and the nature of these ʺintelligences,ʺ whether they belong to the classes of human, human elementary, or elemental spirits depends on a variety of conditions. With one who knows anything of mesmerism, and at the same time of the charitable spirit of the Roman Catholic Church, it ought not to be difficult to comprehend that the incessant curses of the priests and monks; and the bitter anathemas so freely pronounced by Pius IX. — himself a strong mesmerizer, and believed to be a jettatore (evil eye)

— have drawn together legions of elementaries and elementals under the leadership of the disembodied Torquemadas. These are the ʺangelsʺ who play pranks with the statue of the Queen of Heaven. Any one who accepts the ʺmiracleʺ and thinks otherwise blasphemes.

Although it would seem as if we had already furnished sufficient proofs that modern science has little or no reason to boast of originality, yet before closing this volume we will adduce a few more to place the matter beyond doubt. We have but to recapitulate, as briefly as possible, the several claims to new philosophies and discoveries, the announcement of which has made the world open its eyes so

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wide within these last two centuries. We have pointed to the achievements in arts, sciences, and philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Chaldeans, and Assyrians; we will now quote from an author who has passed long years in India studying their philosophy. In the famous and recent work of Christna et le Christ, we find the following tabulation:

ʺPhilosophy — The ancient Hindus have created from the foundation the two systems of spiritualism and materialism, of metaphysical philosophy and of positive philosophy. The first taught in the Vedantic school, whose founder was Vyasa; the second taught in the Sankya school, whose founder was Kapila.

ʺAstronomical Science — They fixed the calendar, invented the zodiac, calculated the precession of the equinoxes, discovered the general laws of the movements, observed and predicted the eclipses.

ʺMathematics — They invented the decimal system, algebra, the differential, integral, and infinitesimal calculi. They also discovered geometry and trigonometry, and in these two sciences they constructed and proved theorems which were only discovered in Europe as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the Brahmans in fact who first deduced the superficial measure of a triangle from the calculation of its three sides, and calculated the relations of the circumference to the diameter. Furthermore, we must restore to them the square of the hypotenuse and the table so improperly called Pythagorean, which we find engraved on the gôparama of the majority of great pagodas.

ʺPhysics — They established the principle which is still our own to‐day, that the universe is a harmonious whole, subject to laws which may be determined by observation and experiment. They discovered hydrostatics; and the famous proposition that every body plunged in water loses of its own weight a weight equal to the volume which it displaces, is only a loan made by the Brahmans to the famous Greek architect, Archimedes. The physicists of the pagodas calculated the velocity of light, fixed in a positive manner the laws which it follows in its reflection. And finally, it is beyond doubt, from the calculations of Surya‐Sidhenta, that they knew and calculated the force of steam. ʺChemistry. — They knew the composition of water, and formulated for gases the famous law, which we know only from yesterday, that the volumes of gas are in inverse ratio to the pressures that they support. They knew how to prepare sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic acids; the oxides of copper, iron, lead, tin, and zinc; the sulphurets of iron, copper, mercury, antimony, and arsenic; the sulphates of zinc and iron; the carbonates of iron, lead, and soda; nitrate of silver; and powder. ʺMedicine. — Their knowledge was truly astonishing. In Tcharaka and Sousruta, the two princes of Hindu medicine, is laid down the system which Hippocrates appropriated later. Sousruta notably enunciates the principles of preventive medicine or hygiene, which he places much above curative medicine — too often, according to him, empyrical. Are we more advanced to‐day? It is not without interest to remark that the Arab physicians, who enjoyed a merited celebrity in the

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middle ages — Averroes among others — constantly spoke of the Hindu physicians, and regarded them as the initiators of the Greeks and themselves. ʺPharmacology. — They knew all the simples, their properties, their use, and upon this point have not yet ceased to give lessons to Europe. Quite recently we have received from them the treatment of asthma, with the datura.

ʺSurgery — In this they are not less remarkable. They made the operation for the stone, succeeded admirably in the operation for cataract, and the extraction of the fœtus, of which all the unusual or dangerous cases are described by Tcharaka with an extraordinary scientific accuracy.

ʺGrammar — They formed the most marvellous language in the world — the Sanscrit — which gave birth to the greater part of the idioms of the Orient, and of Indo‐European countries.

ʺPoetry — They have treated all the styles, and shown themselves supreme masters in all. Sakuntala, Avrita, the Hindu Phædra, Saranga, and a thousand other dramas have their superiors neither in Sophocles nor Euripides, in Corneille nor Shakespere. Their descriptive poetry has never been equalled. One must read, in the Megadata, ʺThe Plaint of an Exile,ʺ who implores a passing cloud to carry his remembrances to his cottage, his relatives and friends, whom he will never see more, to form an idea of the splendor to which this style has been carried in India. Their fables have been copied by all modern and ancient peoples, who have not even given themselves the trouble to color differently the

subject of these little dramas. ʺMusic. — They invented the gamut with its differences of tones and half‐tones much before Gui dʹArezzo. Here is the Hindu scale:

Sa—Ri—Ga—Ma—Pa—Da—Ni—Sa.

ʺArchitecture — They seem to have exhausted all that the genius of man is capable of conceiving. Domes, inexpressibly bold; tapering cupolas; minarets, with marble lace; Gothic towers; Greek hemicycles; polychrome style — all kinds and all epochs are there, betokening the origin and date of the different colonies, which, in emigrating, carried with them their souvenirs of their native art.ʺ Such were the results attained by this ancient and imposing Brahmanical civilization. What have we to offer for comparison? Beside such majestic achievements of the past, what can we place that will seem so grandiose and sublime as to warrant our boast of superiority over an ignorant ancestry? Beside the discoverers of geometry and algebra, the constructors of human speech, the parents of philosophy, the primal expounders of religion, the adepts in psychological and physical science, how even the greatest of our biologists and theologians seem dwarfed! Name to us any modern discovery, and we venture to say, that Indian history need not long be searched before the prototype will be found of record. Here we are with the transit of science half accomplished, and all our ideas in process of readjustment to the theories of force‐correlation, natural selection, atomic polarity, and evolution. And here, to mock our conceit, our apprehensions, and our despair, we may read what Manu

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said, perhaps 10,000 years before the birth of Christ: ʺThe first germ of life was developed by water and heatʺ (Manu, book i., sloka 8).

ʺWater ascends toward the sky in vapors; from the sun it descends in rain, from the rain are born the plants, and from the plants, animalsʺ (book iii., sloka 76).

ʺEach being acquires the qualities of the one which immediately precedes it, in such a manner that the farther a being gets away from the primal atom of its series, the more he is possessed of qualities and perfectionsʺ (book i., sloka 20).

ʺMan will traverse the universe, gradually ascending, and passing through the rocks, the plants, the worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, wild animals, cattle, and higher animals. . . Such is the inferior degreeʺ (Ibid.).

ʺThese are the transformations declared, from the plant up to Brahma, which have to take place in his worldʺ (Ibid.).

ʺThe Greek,ʺ says Jacolliot, ʺis but the Sanscrit. Pheidias and Praxiteles have studied in Asia the chefs‐dʹœuvre of Daonthia, Ramana, and Aryavosta. Plato disappears before Dgeminy and Veda‐Vyasa, whom he literally copies. Aristotle is thrown into the shade by the Pourva‐Mimansa and the Outtara‐Mimansa, in which one finds all the systems of philosophy which we are now occupied in re‐editing, from the Spiritualism of Socrates and his school, the skepticism of Pyrrho, Montaigne, and Kant, down to the positivism of Littre.ʺ

Let those who doubt the exactness of the latter assertion read this phrase, extracted textually from the Outtara‐ Mimansa, or Vedanta, of Vyasa, who lived at an epoch which the Brahmanical chronology fixes at 10,400 years before our era:

ʺWe can only study phenomena, verify them, and hold them to be relatively true, but nothing in the universe, neither by perception nor by induction, nor by the senses, nor by reasoning, being able to demonstrate the existence of a Supreme Cause, which could, at a fixed point of time, have given birth to the universe, Science has to discuss neither the possibility nor impossibility of this Supreme Cause.ʺ

Thus, gradually but surely, will the whole of antiquity be vindicated. Truth will be carefully sifted from exaggeration; much that is now considered fiction may yet be proved fact, and the ʺfacts and lawsʺ of modern science found to belong to the limbo of exploded myths. When, centuries before our era, the Hindu Bramaheupto affirmed that the starry sphere was immovable, and that the daily rising and setting of stars confirms the motion of the earth upon its axis; and when Aristarchus of Samos, born 267 years B.C., and the Pythagorean philosopher Nicete, the Syracusan, maintained the same, what was the credit given to their theories until the days of Copernicus and Galileo? And the system of these two princes of science — a system which has revolutionized the whole world — how long will it be allowed to remain as a complete and undisturbed whole? Have we not, at the present moment, in Germany, a learned savant, a Professor

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Schoëpfer, who, in his public lectures at Berlin, tries to demonstrate, 1, that the earth is immovable; 2, the sun is but a little bigger than it seems; and 3, that Tycho‐Brahe was perfectly right and Galileo perfectly wrong?* And what was Tycho‐Braheʹs theory? Why, that the earth stands immovable in the centre of the universe, and that around it, as around its centre, the whole of the celestial vault gravitates every twenty‐four hours; and finally, that the sun and moon, apart from this motion, proceed on curved lines peculiar to themselves, while Mercury, with the rest of the planets, describes an epicycloid.

We certainly have no intention to lose time nor devote space to either combating or supporting this new theory, which suspiciously resembles the old ones of Aristotle and even the Venerable Bede. We will leave the learned army of modern Academicians to ʺwash their family linen among themselves,ʺ to use an expression of the great Napoleon. But we will, nevertheless, avail ourselves of such a good opportunity as this defection affords to demand once more of science her diploma or patents of infallibility. Alas! are these, then, the results of her boasted progress?

It was hardly more than yesterday when, upon the strength of facts within our own observation, and corroborated by the testimony of a multitude of witnesses, we

* ʺUltimate Deductions of Science; The Earth Motionless.ʺ A lecture demonstrating that our globe does neither turn about its own axis nor around the sun; delivered in Berlin by Doctor Schoëpfer. Seventh Edition.

timidly ventured the assertion that tables, mediums, and Hindu fakirs were occasionally levitated. And when we added that, if such a phenomenon should happen but once in a century, ʺwithout a visible mechanical cause, then that rising is a manifestation of a natural law of which our scientists are yet ignorant,ʺ we were called ʺiconoclastic,ʺ and charged, in our turn, by the newspapers, with ignorance of the law of gravitation. Iconoclastic or not, we never thought of charging science with denying the rotation of the earth on its axis, or its revolution around the sun. Those two lamps, at least, in the beacon of the Academy, we thought would be kept trimmed and burning to the end of time. But, lo! here comes a Berlin professor and crushes our last hopes that Science should prove herself exact in some one particular. The cycle is truly at its lowest point, and a new era is begun. The earth stands still, and Joshua is vindicated!

In days of old — in 1876 — the world believed in centrifugal force, and the Newtonian theory, which explained the flattening of the poles by the rotatory motion of the earth around its axis, was orthodox. Upon this hypothesis, the greater portion of the globular mass was believed to gravitate toward the equator; and in its turn the centrifugal force, acting on the mass with its mightiest power, forced this mass to concentrate itself on the equator. Thus is it that the credulous scientists believed the earth to rotate around its axis; for, were it otherwise, there would exist no centrifugal force, and without this force there could be no gravitation toward the equatorial latitudes. It has been one of the

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accepted proofs of the rotation of the earth, and it is this deduction, with several others, that the Berlin professor declares that, ʺin common with many other scientists,ʺ he ʺrejects.ʺ

ʺIs this not ridiculous, gentlemen,ʺ he concludes, ʺthat we, confiding in what we were taught at school, have accepted the rotation of the earth around its axis as a fact fully demonstrated, while there is nothing at all to prove it, and it cannot be demonstrated? Is it not cause of astonishment that the scientists of the whole educated world, commencing with Copernicus and Kepler, should have begun by accepting such a movement of our planet, and then three and a half centuries later be searching for such proofs? But, alas! though we search, we find none, as was to be expected. All, all is vain!ʺ

And thus it is that at one stroke the world loses its rotation, and the universe is bereaved of its guardians and protectors, the centrifugal and centripetal forces! Nay, ether itself, blown out of space, is but a ʺfallacy,ʺ a myth born of a bad habit of using empty words; the sun is a pretender to dimensions to which it was never entitled; the stars are twinkling dots, and ʺwere so expressly disposed at considerable distances from one another by the Creator of the universe, probably with the intention that they should simultaneously illumine the vast spaces on the face of our globeʺ — says Dr. Schoëpfer.

And is it so that even three centuries and a half have not sufficed the men of exact science to construct one theory that not a single university professor would dare challenge? If

astronomy, the one science built on the adamantine foundation of mathematics, the one of all others deemed as infallible and unassailable as truth itself, can be thus irreverently indicted for false pretences, what have we gained by cheapening Plato to the profit of the Babinets? How, then, do they venture to flout at the humblest observer who, being both honest and intelligent, may say he has seen a mediumistic, or magical phenomenon? And how dare they prescribe the ʺlimits of philosophical inquiry,ʺ to pass beyond which is not lawful? And these quarrelling hypothesists still arraign as ignorant and superstitious those giant intellects of the past, who handled natural forces like world‐building Titans, and raised mortality to an eminence where it allied itself with the gods! Strange fate of a century boasting to have elevated exact science to its apex of fame, and now invited to go back and begin itʹs A B C of learning again!

Recapitulating the evidence contained in this work, if we begin with the archaic and unknown ages of the Hermetic Pimander, and come down to 1876, we find that one universal belief in magic has run through all these centuries. We have presented the ideas of Trismegistus in his dialogue with Asclepius; and without mentioning the thousand and one proofs of the prevalence of this belief in the first centuries of Christianity, to achieve our purpose we have but to quote from an ancient and a modern author. The first will be the great philosopher Porphyry, who several thousand years after the days of Hermes, remarks in relation to the prevailing skepticism of his century, the following: ʺWe need not be

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amazed in seeing the vulgar masses ( oJi polloi ) perceive in statues merely stone and wood. Thus it is generally with those who, ignorant in letters, find naught in stylæ covered with inscriptions but stone, and in written books naught but the tissue of the papyrus.ʺ And 1,500 years later, we see Mr. Sergeant Cox, in stating the case of the shameful prosecution of a medium by just such a blind materialist, thus expressing his ideas: ʺWhether the medium is guilty or guiltless . . .

certain it is that the trial has had the unlooked‐for effect of directing the attention of the whole public to the fact that the phenomena are asserted to exist, and by a great number of competent investigators are declared to be true, and of the reality of which every person may, if he pleases, satisfy himself by actual inspection, thus sweeping away, thus and for ever, the dark and debasing doctrines of the materialists.ʺ

Still, in harmony with Porphyry and other theurgists, who affirmed the different natures of the manifesting ʺspiritsʺ and the personal spirit or will of man, Mr. Sergeant Cox adds, without committing himself any further to a personal decision: ʺTrue, there are differences of opinions . . . and perhaps ever will be, as to the sources of the power that is exhibited in these phenomena; but whether they are the product of the psychic force of the circle . . . or, if spirits of the dead be the agents, as others say, or elemental spirits (whatever it may be) as asserted by a third party, this fact at least is established — that man is not wholly material, that the mechanism of man is moved and directed by some non‐ material — that is, some non‐molecular structure, which

possesses not merely intelligence, but can exercise also a force upon matter, that something to which, for lack of a better title, we have given the name of soul. These glad tidings have by this trial been borne to thousands and tens of thousands, whose happiness here, and hopes of a hereafter, have been blighted by the materialists, who have preached so persistently that soul was but a superstition, man but an automaton, mind but a secretion, present existence purely animal, and the future — a blank.ʺ

ʺTruth alone,ʺ says Pimander, ʺis eternal and immutable; truth is the first of blessings; but truth is not and cannot be on earth: it is possible that God sometimes gifts a few men together with the faculty of comprehending divine things with that of rightly understanding truth; but nothing is true on earth, for everything has matter on it, clothed with a corporeal form subject to change, to alteration, to corruption, and to new combinations. Man is not the truth, for only that which has drawn its essence from itself, and remains itself, and unchangeable, is true. How can that which changes so as not to finally be recognized, be ever true? Truth, then, is that only which is immaterial and not enclosed within a corporeal envelope, that which is colorless and formless, exempt from change and alteration; that which is ETERNAL. All of that which perishes is a lie; earth is but dissolution and generation; every generation proceeds from a dissolution; the things of earth are but appearances and imitations of truth; they are what the picture is to reality. The things of earth are not the TRUTH! . . . Death, for some persons, is an evil which

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strikes them with profound terror. This is ignorance. . . Death is the destruction of the body; the being in it dies not.. . . The material body loses its form, which is disintegrated in course of time; the senses which animated it return to their source and resume their functions; but they gradually lose their passions and their desires, and the spirit ascends to heaven to become a HARMONY. In the first zone, it leaves behind itself the faculty of increasing and decreasing; in the second, the power of doing evil and the frauds of idleness; in the third, deceptions and concupiscence; in the fourth, insatiable ambition; in the fifth, arrogance, audacity, and temerity; in the sixth, all yearning after dishonest acquisitions; and in the seventh, untruthfulness. The spirit thus purified by the effect on him of the celestial harmonies, returns once more to its primitive state, strong of a merit and power self‐acquired, and which belongs to it properly; and only then he begins to dwell with those that sing eternally their praises of the FATHER. Hitherto, he is placed among the powers, and as such has attained to the supreme blessing of knowledge. He is become a GOD! . . . No, the things of earth are not the truth.ʺ

After having devoted their whole lives to the study of the records of the old Egyptian wisdom, both Champollion‐ Figeac and Champollion, Junior, publicly declared, notwithstanding many biassed judgments hazarded by certain hasty and unwise critics, that the Books of Hermes ʺtruly contain a mass of Egyptian traditions which are

constantly corroborated by the most authentic records and monuments of Egypt of the hoariest antiquity.ʺ*

Closing up his voluminous summary of the psychological doctrines of the Egyptians, the sublime teachings of the sacred Hermetic books, and the attainments of the initiated priests in metaphysical and practical philosophy, Champollion‐Figeac inquires — as he well may, in view of the then attainable evidence — ʺwhether there ever was in the world another association or caste of men which could equal them in credit, power, learning, and capability, in the same degree of good or evil? No, never! And this caste was subsequently cursed and stigmatized only by those who, under I know not what kind of modern influences, have considered it as the enemy of men and — science.ʺ†

At the time when Champollion wrote these words, Sanscrit was, we may say, almost an unknown tongue for science. But little in the way of a parallel could have been drawn between the respective merits of the Brahmans and the Egyptian philosophers. Since then, however, it has been discovered that the very same ideas, expressed in almost identical language, may be read in the Buddhistic and Brahmanical literature. This very philosophy of the unreality of mundane things and the illusion of the senses — whose whole substance has been plagiarized in our own times by the German metaphysicians — forms the groundwork of

* Champ.‐Figeac, ʺEgypte,ʺ p. 143.

† Ibid., p. 119.

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Kapilaʹs and Vyasaʹs philosophies, and may be found in Gautama Buddhaʹs enunciation of the ʺfour truths,ʺ the cardinal dogmas of his doctrine. Pimanderʹs expression ʺhe is become a godʺ is epitomized in the one word, Nirvana, which our learned Orientalists most incorrectly consider as the synonym of annihilation!

This opinion of the two eminent Egyptologists is of the greatest value to us if it were only as an answer to our opponents. The Champollions were the first in Europe to take the student of archæology by the hand, and, leading him on into the silent crypts of the past, prove that civilization did not begin with our generations; for ʺthough the origins of ancient Egypt are unknown, she is found to have been at the most distant periods within the reach of historical research, with her great laws, her established customs, her cities, her kings, and godsʺ; and behind, far behind, these same epochs we find ruins belonging to other still more distant and higher periods of civilization. ʺAt Thebes, portions of ruined buildings allow us to recognize remnants of still anterior structures, the materials of which had served for the erection of the very edifices which have now existed for thirty‐six centuries!ʺ* ʺEverything told us by Herodotus and the Egyptian priests is found to be exact, and has been corroborated by modern scientists,ʺ adds Champollion.†

* Ibid., p. 2.

† Ibid., p. 11.

Whence the civilization of the Egyptians came, will be shown in volume II., and in this respect it will be made to appear that our deductions, though based upon the traditions of the Secret Doctrine, run parallel with those of a number of most respected authorities. There is a passage in a well‐ known Hindu work which may well be recalled in this connection.

ʺUnder the reign of Viswamitra, first king of the Dynasty of Soma‐Vanga, in consequence of a battle which lasted five days, Manu‐Vina, heir of the ancient kings, being abandoned by the Brahmans, emigrated with all his companions, passing through Arya, and the countries of Barria, till he came to the shores of Masraʺ (History of India, by Collouca‐Batta). Unquestionably this Manu‐Vina and Menes, the first Egyptian King, are identical.

Arya, is Eran (Persia); Barria, is Arabia, and Masra, was the name of Cairo, which to this day is called, Masr, Musr, and Misro. Phœnician history names Maser as one of the ancestors of Hermes.

And now we will bid farewell to thaumatophobia and its advocates, and consider thaumatomania under its multifarious aspects. In vol. II., we intend to review the ʺmiraclesʺ of Paganism and weigh the evidence in their favor in the same scales with Christian theology. There is a conflict not merely impending but already begun between science and theology, on the one hand, and spirit and its hoary science, magic, on the other. Something of the possibilities of the latter have already been displayed, but more is to come.

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The petty, mean world, for whose approving nod scientists and magistrates, priests and Christians compete, have begun their latter‐day crusade by sentencing in the same year two innocent men, one in France, the other in London, in defiance of law and justice. Like the apostle of circumcision, they are ever ready to thrice deny an unpopular connection for fear of ostracism by their own fellows. The Psychomantics and the Psychophobists must soon meet in fierce conflict. The anxiety to have their phenomena investigated and supported by scientific authorities has given place with the former to a frigid indifference. As a natural result of so much prejudice and unfairness as have been exhibited, their respect for scientists is waning fast, and the reciprocal epithets bandied between the two parties are becoming far from complimentary to either. Which of them is right and which wrong, time will soon show and future generations understand. It is at least safe to prophesy that the Ultima Thule of Godʹs mysteries, and the key to them are to be sought elsewhere than in the whirl of Avogadroʹs molecules.

People who either judge superficially, or, by reason of their natural impatience would gaze at the blazing sun before their eyes are well fitted to bear lamp‐light, are apt to complain of the exasperating obscurity of language which characterizes the works of the ancient Hermetists and their successors. They declare their philosophical treatises on magic incomprehensible. Over the first class we can afford to waste no time; the second, we would beg to moderate their anxiety, remembering those sayings of Espagnet — ʺTruth

lies hid in obscurity,ʺ and ʺPhilosophers never write more deceitfully than when plainly, nor ever more truly than when obscurely.ʺ Furthermore, there is a third class, whom it would compliment too much to say that they judge the subject at all. They simply denounce ex‐cathedra. The ancients they treat as dreamy fools, and though but physicists and thaumatophobic positivists, they commonly claim a monopoly of spiritual wisdom!

We will select Irenæus Philaletha to answer this latter class. ʺIn the world our writings shall prove a curious‐edged knife; to some they shall carve out dainties, but to others they shall only serve to cut their fingers; yet we are not to be blamed, for we do seriously admonish all who shall attempt this work that they undertaketh the highest piece of philosophy in nature; and though we write in English, yet our matter will be as hard as Greek to some, who will think, nevertheless, that they understand as well, when they misconstrue our meaning most perversely; for is it imaginable that they who are fools in nature should be wise in books, which are testimonies unto nature?ʺ

The few elevated minds who interrogate nature instead of prescribing laws for her guidance; who do not limit her possibilities by the imperfections of their own powers; and who only disbelieve because they do not know, we would remind of that apothegm of Narada, the ancient Hindu philosopher:

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ʺNever utter these words: ʹI do not know this — therefore understand to judge.ʺ